Ask Paul Copycat Kelm, geezer chaplain.
I laugh when people think the newest church politicians are going to change what has been happening.
The church politicians make it to the big time by going along with everything, knowing how dissent is punished.
They move adroitly into copying what has happened before, because it is just another stage in their career of conformity. They continue to do what they have done before, and the results are the same.
Some may ask, "Why is Ichabod so good at doctrinal polemics?" The reason is - practice. I have engaged apostates ever since my earliest days in the LCA. I argued with the professors in seminary and made fun of their weirdest theories. One was that a book revealed the author's secret knowledge of Christ, which was never known until about 1970. I repeated that and laughed out loud. The book was dropped from the course at once, although it was read out loud, solemnly, before that.
Likewise, I read from a book about Tillich at Notre Dame, where his liberal theologian friend called the adulterer a pagan. The professor was aghast as I said, "And that is his friend from Union, repeating what Union Seminary liberals said." The professor is now occupying an endowed chair at Harvard while I write a blog "no one reads." But at least I am good at it.
I studied comparative doctrine at Notre Dame, which was a good place to do it. We could argue doctrine in class, because there was no repeat after me dogma. That was a good start for WELS, where no one knew or adhered to Lutheran doctrine. Working in Columbus among adulterous false teachers, with divorce and alcoholism being the least of their sins, I learned the Book of Concord and its history. I had to find out for myself what the doctrinal issues were. The olde Syn Conference simply repeated the Crypto-Calvinist era, and it grows worse each day.
I never saw pastors who hated Lutheran doctrine and worship as much as the Columbus gang did. They even refused to have circuit meetings. One would think that the VP of the district and the circuit pastor would not need to have their feet put in the fire for the most basic of pastoral functions. But they did. And they made circuit meetings a farce too.
So laugh out loud when the ecclesiastical bigwigs say, "You can reform us only in the ways we allow, using the methods we dictate, while we pummel you." They conformists bullies are good at what they do, running everything into the ground.
Meanwhile, the useless Boomer pastors and laity will have this on their account - They are the reason everything has gone this way. They have done almost nothing, waiting for someone else to do it for them. The Boomer children will have few church jobs waiting for them. Churches and schools are closing at a record rate.
