The Past
I objected to the ELCA merger and outlined the future actions of the synod. I left the LCA before the merger took place and published my research in Christian News. That embarrassed WELS no end, because they were busy working with ELCA and have been ever since. I was 25 years ahead of my time, but no one listened. Now ELCA is shattering faster than a bar-room mirror in a cheap Western movie.
The Present
Missouri, WELS, and the Little Sect like to look down their snouts at ELCA, but they also like working with them and grabbing all the Thrivent loot they can.
The Future, 2017
ELCA will apologize to the Church of Rome for being so nasty during the Reformation.
By 2017, WELS will have no parochial school system left. The last two preps will be gone. MLC will be owned by a for-profit corporation, doing well. Mequon will be working on plans to sell the property.
Missouri tongue-clucking will be loud, but the flopsweat will be flowing as Ft. Wayne is consolidated with St. Louis. The catastrophic decline of St. Louis will make the location of the merged seminary a hot topic.
Pope John the Unmerciful will still be in charge of the Little Sect on the Prairie, but everyone will realize the end is near.
2030
The NALC will re-unite with ELCA and apologize for being so nasty during the 2010 split.
A few will remember the Little Sect on the Prairie, but a wiseacre blogger will predict that the ELS will soon be as forgotten as the Olive Branch Synod.
WELS will work out legal arrangements for consolidation with Missouri, which will remind everyone of the KMart-Sears merger: two dying entities embracing each other.
Katy Perry, the new Synod President of WELS, will renounce her husband and out herself. Her cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" will keep the synod solvent another year, so no one will object.
Missouri will work on a lengthy apology, to allow them to exist as a non-geographical synod of ELCA-Episcopal. Remaining clergy, men and women alike, will proudly point to the Missouri circuit as the "Confessional Lutherans."
