bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Suspending the Doctrinal Pussycat in WELS":
Seems to me the disciplinary procedure is too distributed. One would have to be a master politician to work that system and get results. Moreover, the synod is too small and interconnected to assume that all the people who had to concur to oust a DP would be impartial or recuse themselves for conflict of interest. Anyway, everyone knows that if a student makes some noise, he won't make it through seminary, and if some called worker makes some noise, he'll be out of a call, or never get another call, and his extended family may be out of favor for decades. So the whole system is corrupt and un-reformable (except by forces the synod doesn't control, such as the police). What usually happens is if someone can't keep his peace about some abuse, he'll write a letter and just drop out of the ministry or out of teaching, knowing that by trying to do or say anything, he forfeits his call, so he might try to go to another synod, or get another line of work. A case in point is Michael Schottey, who obviously knows the system, wrote a couple posts ago:
"I graduated from MLC but part of the reason I did not attend WLS was my inability to "stick my head in the sand."
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GJ - The net result of WELS corruption will be the wrong people graduating from The Sausage Factory - lazy, ignorant bullies who know how to milk the system, grab foundation money, copy and paste like their beloved mentors.
I know good pastors have graduated and will graduate from Mequon, but they are the exceptions, sorry to say.
3 comments:
I took a trip to the Seminary during my sophomore year at Wisconsin Lutheran High School. This was during an all-expenses paid day of traveling and lunch, in an attempt to encourage the youth of Wisco to enter the Ministry.
Even at that young age (before I had been introduced to the Book of Concord), the class I had to sit through was almost unbearable. It was a Hebrew instruction class, and the information that the professor asked was unbelievably easy; I thought any simpleton could answer - and no student save one was answering. Most of the other students were busy on their laptops looking at MySpace and their email accounts (this was before the rise of FaceBook).
Suffice it to say, I could not envision myself enduring 8 more years of the WELS “training” I had been forced to take in for the past 14. In the end, I seriously considered transferring schools and entering the seminary tract at MLC at the beginning of last year. I am glad I did not make that decision now (this was also before I discovered the Book of Concord for myself).
That's the WELS oligarchy that members love so much. They demand to be revered like a god, too.
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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