People have voiced their conclusion, separately, that the apostates will win in WELS. One is a pastor. Several are layman. The laymen think the Chicaneries are too entrenched to uproot.
The political component is impossible to ignore. The WELS school system, ever since Ted Hartwig infected it at Mary Lou College, is consistently liberal. Closing Northwestern College was a successful (albeit crooked) attempt to end a conservative bastion in WELS. Even then, NWC was not exactly a fortress of orthodoxy, and the faculty members were too timid to fight for their cause. Is MLC stronger because of that merger? It is weaker and more apostate, just like the Andover-Newton-Colgate-Rochester-Crozer-etc-Divinity School.
My take - MLC, Bethany, and WLC will not survive as separate entities and they know it.
The only way to get rid of the apostates would be to end the teacher vote that supports spineless and two-faced Doctrinal Pussycats. The largest WELS state has the most parochial and Area Lutheran High School teachers - also the worst DPs. And that is saying something! In the unlikely event of DP removal, the teachers will vote in another set of banana DPs - yellow, green, and just plain rotten.
If the teacher vote is not neutralized, the only other solution is the demolition of the WELS schools, from pre-K to the Sausage Factory. An outsider can see that their educational system only serves to promote the mainline cause, creeping apostasy. I do not think the CG gurus in WELS will become Pentecostal and perform fake miracles. I know some have turned Pentecostal. The majority will become honest atheists, like Curtis Peterson, Robert Schumann, and Mark Freier. The Chicaneries are already mainline, unionistic apostates. They are only one step from heart-felt, compassionate atheism.
As Brett Meyer noted, the pipeline is full of students trained in apostasy, too full of themselves to know it. Reflecting the in-your-face attitude of MLC, the vidiot students could not even fake contrition. Instead, they "forgave" those who did not appreciate them out-outting the Fire Island boys.
Here are additional factors militating against any real change in WELS, which is currently an unimportant nub in the Fuller Seminary mainline network:
- Holy Mother WELS is infallible so any criticism is harmful to the institution, especially when it is valid, scholarly, confessional criticism.
- Too many people are closely related or friends through school, so that makes it difficult to drop the hammer on the guilty, even when found with a murdered spouse.
- Thrivent unites Lutherans in ELCA, Missouri, WELS, the ELS, and the CLC (sic), a built-in and cleverly funded pan-Lutheran union.
- Few are educated in the Confessions.
- Even fewer are inclined to fight for the pure Word. That generation is the WWII generation. The Boomers are too lax and self-centered to shed a drop of blood for doctrine.
- Hardly anyone is in shape for the fight.
In the long run, we all have to face our mortality and the Day of Judgment. I wonder - how much will the size the buildings and parking lots matter before the Throne of Grace? Can someone despise the Means of Grace, mocking the Word, and cop a plea at the last minute, based on statistics?
Lutheran pastors crow about numbers and say nothing about being faithful to the Word of God. "Join us - we are friendly and successful: watch us grow."
One thing is needful, and you have chosen wrong, WELS.
