Those 9 points, in that one post, about Perish Assistance recommendations are exactly the same as those they were selling to our church back a few years, when the program started here. The "printed" report that was the result of Phase 2 of the effort came to 70 pages, and cost 70-75 dollars a page. The one problem was someone forgot to do a Find and Replace for the name of the previous congregation in the boilerplate. For most of the specifics they named Our Church accurately, but in some places the name of the congregation was Another Church. Oh-oh.
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GJ - So I am doing the math. The Perish Consultants (as in Paul Calvin Kelm, James Huebner, et al.) come in and pretend to study the congregation. They print up their recommendations, which are simply the same things over and over - without even changing names. And they charged this poor congregation $5,000 for one phase alone! So why did WELS have to bring missionaries home? Because these plagiarizing copycats from The Love Shack drained the life-blood of the congregations.
Did they benefit the congregations? No. They alienated people and moved on with the cash in hand. I would love to know what Kelm, Stroh, Huebner and others were paid in addition to their normal salaries.
When I was in the evil LCA, a building consultant from the national office met with us several times about a new addition. They charged nothing for this, since the consultant was paid from benevolence.
When I vicared in the LCA, someone from the Lutheran Layman's group organized the capital funds campaign for a weekly fee - no commission. He used Biblical material for the most part, but some of it was over the top, as in "If not now, when? If not us, who?"
If someone working for the LCA had tried to charge $5,000 to $35,000 for handing a congregation some Fuller Seminary boilerplate, the congregation would have tossed him through a stained glass window, head first.
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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "How To Get Robbed (Not Robed) By WELS Perish Servi...":
The pastors of those congregations served by Parish Services think it was money well spent. It's like the MasterCard commercial:
o Xeroxed study with a little white-out--$10 grand
o Pastor never has to do evangelism or much visitation ever again--priceless!
