Church and Change bio: Ron started his ministy (sic) by serving three congregations in Colorado. He served for 30 years at St. Peter Lutheran Church, Appleton, WI and is now retired. During his ministry at St. Peter he served as Circuit Pastor, Chairman of the Board of Regents at Fox Valley Lutheran High School, Secretary of the Fox River Valley Conference, on the Governing Board at Luther Preparatory School, and Circuit Chairman. He has been a promoter of creating innovative ministries for a changing world. His wife, Renate, and he have three children.
John has left a new comment on your post "What Can Anyone Do - WELS and Other Disasters":
Maybe the pastors and laity of the ELS and WELS refuse to confess the truth and fail to replace the scoundrels because many of the Church and Changers are the more senior pastors.
It's easy to say that the laity must do their part. The problem is that in many cases the laity has had the same pastor for many years. They have come to trust him. Why should they not?
Then, slowly but surely the pastor introduces Church and Change into the congregation. The leaders of the congregation are first sucked in. After a while, the pastor has his supporters, also folks trusted in the congregation.
I've seen it happening. It's an awful thing to behold.
When there is resistance, the C & C'ers back off. Just to re-group, mind you. They will be back.
Who's going to challenge these senior, trusted pastors? No one. Once the lay leadership of a congregation is sucked into C & C by the pastor, the congregation will follow. It may take awhile, but it will happen.
1 comments:
In my humble opinion, the only thing that can be done at this point, pragmatically, is for members of WELS congregations to apply pressure by working cooperatively from outside Synod structures, to broadcast non-Lutheran CGM practices as they have witnessed them in our Synod, and to develop and disseminate sound theological perspectives and educational material and the like, that will make the laity aware of the issues so that they can act. The high-road of working within channels has been taken by many noble individuals over the past decades, by laymen and pastors alike, with the result that these individuals have all but disappeared. Today, the false ideas responsible for the approval and exploitation of CGM error permeates the thinking of most Synod leaders -- men who have spent "past decades" under the influence of CGM, tarrying after positions of power. The Synod as an organization, as powerful as its structures have been in shielding the Synod from error, now protects error from being corrected. That is because the problems related to this error are systemic; leaders whose thinking has been poisoned by CGM are entrenched up and down the authority chain and in the schools, they mentor future leaders and otherwise have themselves replaced by those sharing the same CGM perspectives, with the result that CGM errors function as operating principles in practically every institution of the Synod. The pastors know it -- how effective have they been in thwarting the advance of this stuff? The laity will need to act. That's a scary thought -- kind of like calling out the militia. Untrained, unreliable, lacking discipline and resilience, they are just as likely to scatter and run under fire as anything else. But it's all we got. Besides, they generally have the heart for it, if nothing else, and that's worth quite a bit.
In the end, organizationally speaking, it won't be the Seminary who decides orthodoxy, it will be the laity. They are the one's who pay the bills (for now). CGM acolytes know this as well. That is why they are eagerly seeking the development of various trusts to pay for operating and/or other expenses. Such trusts provide a relatively steady cash flow that is under the direct control of Synod leaders. Thus, depending on the principal, such trusts serve to reduce, or cut out entirely, the only tangible influence the laity has -- their financial influence. As long as we laymen are critical to current financial operations, we have a say in what goes on in our Synod. Remember, were not members of Synod proper -- only members of member congregations. Only pastors, male teachers and congregations as corporate entities are members of Synod. Laymen are not members. The desire to be emancipated from the opinions of the laity, and from dependence on their direct financial contributions, is also a source of consternation regarding the longevity of our elderly -- they're not dying quickly enough to build these trusts and cut out the influence of the laity. Once the trusts are in place, and sufficiently funded, Synod leadership won't need or seek or pretend to care about input from the laity at all.
Now is the time for the laity to act, to tell their fellow laymen what is going on, to form groups like Intrepid Lutherans, to begin pulishing their opinions online, to even develop print materials targeting retirees with liturature regarding the error that is infecting their Synod. In addition, giving needs to stop until the DPs take these issues seriously, until they give public evidence that they take these issues seriously, and show publically that they are taking steps to correct the errors of CGM that infect our Synod.
My Opinion,
Freddy Finkelstein
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