ELCA continues to ape WELS, ELS, and Missouri by rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent.
Now there is a flurry of restorations in ELCA. Congregations and pastors under their fake discipline have been reconciled to the ELCA leadership, which shepherded a statement at the August 2009 convention allowing this to happen. The ELCA bishops showed signs of resisting so they were by-passed completely.
I could list the announcements of the new order. One woman pastor was officially out of ELCA for about 10 years, because of her lesbian partner, but now the bishop is preaching her into heaven for her humility, her witness, and her blah blah.
One shockaroo was finding an LCA pastor who left the organization at the same time I did. He was a married man. Mrs. Ichabod and I knew him as someone on the far Left of the Left Wing. He was in another denomination for a number of years and now is back with ELCA, because ELCA welcomes him.
Meanwhile, ELCA is pounding congregations - like Faith in Moline, just because the Faith members said they would have the bishop arrested if he showed up on their property.
ELCA has a dual message. One is: "Few churches are leaving ELCA, and we recognize their rights. We just want to have a conversation with them before they vote the second time."
The second message is: "We will fight you in every way possible, enlist our corporate lawyers, block, dither, obfuscate, deceive, slander, and rage in public against you, in His Name. Amen."
One article gave the projected loss at 5%, which is a new case of whistling past the graveyard. The Northern Illinois District cut their budget by 40% already, suggesting the losses may be a wee bit larger than 5%. ELCA canned 47 staff at once.
Their main problem at the moment is the withholding of funds. The larger the congregation, the more likely it is to withhold funds and vote on leaving. ELCA is facing a superfluity of small congregations with pastors in rainbow colored stoles. The good news is that Pastor Cedric and his Life Partner will not need an altar guild. They will fuss over the decorations all week long.
What can WELS learn from this debacle? First of all, very few are going to join WELS upon leaving ELCA, no matter how apostate WELS wants to be. All the baby-steps toward ELCA--including women pastors, open communion, and Church Growth--will not avail.
WELS will plummet even faster if the leaders and members continue to take a soft approach on their apostates and a hard approach on those who dare to mention the horrible legacy of Mischke and Gurgle. At the moment, with Kelm and Stroh in the catbird seats, Jeske and Becker running loose, Patterson coiled to strike, and the schools in a flat spin, the future is certain.
