rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Keeping a Corrupt System Corrupt":
All of this sort of explains why the laity may be so timid. My eyes were first opened when, as a newly elected elder at my first meeting, I witnessed the pastor bullying one of the elders. I wondered then what it was all about. This elder stopped any involvement in congregational activities, and became virtually delinquent before he passed away. He had developed quite an attitude.
Other board members who see this type of treatment most likely figure that they had better not make too many waves or they will fall out of favor. I have heard a lot of complaints from the women who suggest that it may be better if they could be in those positions of leadership because more could be accomplished. This is not the Biblical solution. When the women see the cowardice of many of the men, they often get desperate.
There is an overdue emphasis in the WELS to get the high school grads to attend MLC. There is all this blathering about serving, etc. Going to MLC is touted like joining a fraternity. You allegedly receive all kinds of benefits from it. I am not exaggerating one bit. There is this subtle implication that anything else is substandard.
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GJ - The prep school grads in WELS called the area Lutheran schools "public schools" with a sneer. The Northwestern Prep graduates sneered at MLS grads, etc. Bullying is pandemic in the synodical scholls, so it is important to get that training and get one's ticket punched.
Bullies are cowardly thugs, and they stick together to enhance their feeble sense of worth.
The LCMS has its clergy bullies too, although some of them only think they are clergy.
The ELS re-elected their worst bully as Synodical President. Being whipped with a coat-hanger at NWC did wonders for instilling the right attitude in Pope John's subordinate.
5 comments:
Here's my monthly...
"The culture of MLC is nothing like NW" spiel.
Most of my friends are LPS or ALHS grads...I married one. I remember some "clichiness" for about a semester, then it stopped. By junior/senior year, I barely knew where people went to HS, let alone cared.
There are plenty of things to harp upon. The "bullying" at MLC isn't one of them.
"This is also true" - Black Dynamite
As a Prep graduate that attends Bethany, I often made the trip to see old Prep cronies attending MLC just 25 miles away. I noticed that MLS grads were embraced as brothers and even the ALFs (Area Lutheran Friends) weren't named for japery.
NWC and its reputation are dead and gone with the post-1995 MLC grads, save for the vintage Trojan sweaters I see 3rd-4th generation WELS kids wearing from time to time (myself included).
I, too, have witnessed the overbearing and dismissive behavior of unloving pastors. They seem to relish cutting off and intimidating other pastors and laity. There is something seriously wrong with them.
rlschultz wrote: "There is an overdue emphasis in the WELS to get the high school grads to attend MLC."
Did rlsschultz mean "undo" or "overdue"? Of course, it may seem late in the day for promoting MLC after it's already been open for 150 years.
I wrote about this phenomenon in a comment a month or two back, but it seems Google/Blogger doesn't index the comments, so I can't find that comment by searching.
The main reason pastors are promoting MLC more than ever doesn't have much to do with any of the reasons they cite. A pro-CG pastor let out that the real reason for promoting MLC was the Shrinkers covet the one or two million dollar synodical subsidy that MLC gets each year, and they want to use that for CG programs and buildings. However, they've been told that MLC can only be self-sufficient if more students attend and take out mammoth student loans like they do in the LCMS schools. So reducing or even ending the subsidy is the real reason for the belated emphasis on going to MLC.
The president is NOT the worst bully in the ELS.
Pastors who bully are cowards, and show nothing but disdain for the sheep of the flock to which they were called.
Maybe worse are the sheep who support their bullying shepherd.
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