rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Lutheran School, Christian School, or Profit Cente...":
25 years ago, our oldest child began 1st grade in a WELS LES. He did not go to kindergarten there, but the kindergarten there was only three full days a week. There was no tuition for the children of the congregation. There was only a per child annual book rental fee. There was no pre-kindergarten pre-school and no day care. Those who needed day care for their children could always find it among the stay at home moms, like my wife. Like so many congregation supported elementary schools, it was there to serve the members, first and foremost. At the voters' meetings, it was often stressed that it was the responsibility of the congregation to feed the lambs. There was also the emphasis to live within our means, as the Lord provides. This applied both at the congregational and the family level. (continued)
rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "Lutheran School, Christian School, or Profit Cente...":
Slowly, partial tuition for congregational members began to be implemented at the elementary school.
Then, the talk began about the school being a "mission arm" of the congregation. Enrollment had plateaued at about 100 students, K-8. Then, the pre-school started. Then, the masonry evangelism followed. At that time, I could see that the marketing strategy was to the upper middle class. What they ended up with were those who only had an appearance of wealth. They lacked the insight and spiritual maturity that was there among the multi-generational families that were the backbone of the congregational.
The new leadership was quick to adopt church growth methods, since many were employed in modern corporate methods. Why am I not surprised that it has come to this?
---
California wrote:
Jim Becker is absolutely right re: why churches should not be in the business of preschool or daycare. Once again its WELS congregation trying to identify as closely with the secular paradigm as closely as possible and trying to "sanctify" the activity with a Christian label. Preschool, Early Childhood Education, Day Care (call it what you will) is on governments' agenda both state and Federal, and has been since the mid 20th Century. California has a program euphemistically named: " First Five". Cute! Apologists for preschool/day care whether church sponsored or not, should obtain copies of current Master Plans for their respective states or jurisdictions. If they do the research they will discover the terminology in all of them, almost without exception, will call for "birth to post secondary" education. Some even refer to prenatal oversight of mothers with the rationale being producing healthy children to fill all those early education centers. For churches to fall for the preschool/day care propaganda is evidence of the church following the world.....no longer acting as "salt". When this writer was a student at a mid west state university, the ground work for preschool/day care agenda was being laid in mid 20th Century. To receive a degree in a specific major even though the emphasis was on another trajectory of the major, we were required to participate in the university's on campus experimental preschool and courses in which we learned the theories behind preschool, ECE, et al. Most of the toddlers enrolled in that campus preschool were children of psychology professors. After that experience, I vowed that if I ever had children, they would never set foot in any preschool or day care. They didn't, and neither did my grandchildren. Church sponsored preschool/day care only serves to condition Christians to accept, and accommodate the agenda in place by the state. The church is the only legitimate entity to resist the tsunami of a secular big brother nanny state. But what one sees is the opposite.
