We have official denials that COS still exists,
so we know the story is true.
T-shirts and sheriff department complaints.
If you click on the link, YouTube will suggest other gay videos to watch.
Several people have recently discussed Martin Luther College with me. They have a faux-secret group there called
COS, which was formed decades ago to support under-aged drinking and other illegal behavior. I remember hearing about it at Northwestern College, when President Voss said to an assembly, "Welcome to the land of COS," and the place erupted with cheers. Information about the term and the roar of approval was sketchy, to say the least.
Teen drinking is a great prelude to a lifetime of alcoholism, and WELS is known for being the ecclesiastical version of Country Western singing. There are the WELS drunks and the drunks' drunks. I could mention names and the pastors would easily associate them with being alcoholics. UOJ does more than promote Antinomianism. UOJ
is Antinomianism in disguise. But WELS is like Ireland, where public intoxication is nothing while trivial matters are heinous sins.
Another component is the amalgamation of DMLC and NWC. Before, WELS had two small colleges - one for teacher training and one exclusively for future pastors. The future pastors had to get their language studies done before seminary, so they were learning Greek, German, Hebrew, and perhaps some Latin. DMLC included some men but had more women students. The WELS joke was that DMLC stood for Dumb Man's Last Chance, since someone could drop out of NWC due to languages and finish at DMLC as a teacher.
WELS, being such great stewards, pushed the two colleges together, creating one small and shrinking college out of two stable schools. Gurgle was the genius behind this. He swore it would only cost $8 million and blew $30 million on it. Prairie was turned into a prison and Northwestern Prep took over the NWC campus as the re-baptized Martin Luther Prep. The new Prairie prison got a brand new music of building, which WELS built for $500,000 to $1 million. Doubtless they sing "Prisoner of Love" with greater gusto, thanks to Wisconsin's money management skills.
This bifurcation of educational goals at Mary Lou College means that the pastor-track students have to study many extra hours while the teacher-track students go out to party. That makes it easier to downgrade to the teacher program, which was somewhat shameful before, meaning a guy had to move to another state. Now all he needs is a form filled out and a sturdy liver.
WELS is not very good at teaching the languages required. Unfortunately, those who get foreign languages easily are those who end up teaching them. They really think that memorizing word lists and grammar rules will teach students to translate, because it worked for them.
My fellow students of English - did you teach your children how to talk that way?
"Billy, we are learning the imperative mood today. Here are the rules..."
Billy - "Give me a cookie."
"Later, Billy. First you must learn the rules."
Does the government teach its spies and military people that way? Ha!
I learned the Roland Bainton method at Yale, which he used to master 20 languages. He used the Gospel of John in Greek and the same Gospel in a new language to learn the basic vocabulary and grammar.
I modified this for the Bonehead Method. The Bonehead Method begins with the Gospel of John and adds a few simple rules -
1. Avoid the pony or jimmy (English translation, called pony for a free ride, jimmy for the King James). The pony is the last-ditch crutch, never left open. We are all lazy.
2. Translate the known words, guess the rest.
3. No writing of the English word in the text.
4. Forget grammar rules, such as objective versus subjective genitive. Is that the origin of two justifications - mission creep?
5. Parse carefully, using the Schluessel if necessary. Use it in German for Brownie points. Oh wait - WELS is death on Brownies.
6. Look for the root words and use them in translation, to get used to the feel of the language. In Greek,
phone (called) is translated "phoned." Jesus phoned the disciples. That is a bit funny but it helps the student look for root words and translate more freely. One can also find many fun and even shocking words in Greek and Latin. In Latin, a bowl of water is a pelvis of water.
The Bonehead Method works with all students, whether they are horrible in languages or truly gifted.
This is how I tutored in Greek and Latin.
A. We translated the first four chapters of John slowly, picking up the basic insights about vocabulary and parsing.
B. Start over from John 1:1 and translate the entire Gospel.
C. By the end of John's Gospel, students can read the Greek or Latin and translate on the fly.
Pastors should start out students in Greek and Latin before they take the formal classes. That way the student can go to class without being in constant flopsweat over "what does this word mean" and "what is this rule."
WELS goes through the motions, but a lot of the pastors never catch Hebrew or Greek. They rely on their jimmies to get through.
