Barth and Fuller Seminary
I have to start with Karl Barth of Switzerland. As readers know, he was a Communist, an adulterer, an intellectual fraud, and an apostate. His mistress wrote most of his Dogmatics and hardly anything was written after Charlotte Kirschbaum died. His students must have known, because she lived in his home with Karl, wife Nellie, and his children.
Barth's carnal adultery damaged his own soul and harmed his entire family. His spiritual adultery cast a long shadow over all of modern theology, because he is the most influential of all Protestant theologians of the 20th century.
My Notre Dame advisor, John Howard Yoder, was his student, and doubtless got some his peculiar ideas from Barth. Yoder, as detailed in Hannah's Child, was disciplined by his Mennonite congregation and conference for having a number of Mennonite women become intimate with him.
Two leaders of Fuller Seminary were students of Barth, taking his neo-apostasy back with them and changing the entire mission of the school. Instead of being a conservative Evangelical school, Fuller became a feminist anything-goes ecumenical mainline school, openly opposed to inerrancy and scornful of those who labored under such delusions. The conservative staff quit and Donald McGavran, sociologist, entered with his Church Growth concepts, with a Barthian foundation. One WELS graduate of Fuller confirmed in a letter that Barth was Fuller's official theologian.
The Barth effect could also be seen in the School of Psychology being named after a sex offender so notorious that they had to remove his name from it once the facts came out.
St. Paul, German Village, Columbus
The LCMS kicked Floyd Luther Stolzenburg out of the ministry "for cause." The better term might be "for many, many causes." His wife divorced him and she gained custody of their children. The husband of his mistress sued Floyd, the staff of Salem in Blackjack (St. Louis) and other LCMS entities.
Floyd came back to Columbus, following his ex-wife and shopped for a job. The public school system would not hire him. Various denominations would not hire him when they checked up on his exit from Salem, Black Jack. Floyd visited St. Paul, German Village, which was loosely affiliated with WELS, on its own terms.
The story is that Floyd got funded because his father was a business pal of The Donor. He started Luther Parish Resources as a Church Growth agency, but the new board refused to hire him. The Donor doubled the ante, so LPR hired Roger Zehms (divorced WELS pastor, St. Louis) and then Floyd. Both men worked out of The Donor's real estate office.
LPR
LPR consisted of two divorced ex-pastors acting like the supervisors of the Columbus WELS congregations. The whole concept, as Wally Oelhafen admitted, was to get Floyd a WELS parish after a decent interval, and DP Robert Mueller and VP Paul Kuske recommended him for colloquy.
Mueller and Kuske gave the ex-pastors years to promote Church Growth and cause trouble in the local congregations. I thought the LCA was bad, but I have never seen such evil in one group of congregations. Good was bad, and bad was good, according to WELS.
Stolzenburg was never a member of WELS and said he would never join. St. Paul, German Village, was handy for playing the chameleon. Nevertheless, Kuske and Bob Schumann both wrote letters of recommendation for Floyd, and Floyd got hired at the sister church of St. Paul, Emmanuel (also independent and Masonic). The Masons wanted Floyd, who pledged in a letter to commune them.
Poor Little Tim Glende
Glende had the misfortune of growing up in a circuit of delusions. The circuit pastor did not hold circuit meetings until I raised the issue. Floyd had no business even being a lay leader, let alone a fake pastor, but that was supported 100% by his own pastor, VP Kuske, and DP Mueller. In fact, no one in the entire Michigan District objected - except for me.
Floyd taught Church Growth at St. Paul, German Village. He promoted CG in Columbus and wherever WELS could trick people into listening to him. He became a leader of the Ohio WELS women's group, too, with his second wife. Floyd was famous for his work with the LCMS women's groups. I will leave the details out, but SP Jack Preus told me that Floyd was famous all over North St. Louis.
Bullying and Fears
People objected to Floyd's obnoxious behavior, but his guard dogs were always there to snarl at anyone who dared to object. When some pastors objected to Floyd giving a paper at the Ohio Conference, the objection was made to look like a crime.
Kuske is still remembered for being the dean of boys at Michigan Lutheran Seminary. The students called it The Reign of Terror. I suspect he was called to Grove City to spare future generations his methods. Sparky Brenner followed, and Kuske was visibly jealous of his replacement.
When Floyd got his job at Emmanuel, one member was terrified of being known for objecting to him. That person did the research that WELS lied about. Copies of the lawsuit floated about, but nothing came of it.
ELS, Thoughts of Faith, More Lies
Thanks to Roger Kovaciny, WELS, and Jay Webber, ELS - Floyd's Masonic congregation became a donor to Thoughts of Faith in the Ukraine. St. Marvin of Schwan gave most of the loot, which disappeared faster than a cheese factory on its way over.
Floyd's Emmanuel newsletters, which I received from a friend, bragged about their association with Thoughts of Faith. His website also boasted about it and published photos.
Somehow Emmanuel got a matching grant from Schwan to send money to TOF for a chapel. That means WELS/ELS got behind this project, because they had Marvin in their pocket. He was making regular down-payments on his indulgence, where the two sects and Missouri erased the Sixth Commandment. Or maybe they omitted the not, as the printers did in the Sinner's Bible.
Once Floyd and Schumann (another Shrinker) had Columbus to themselves, the whole situation at St. Paul, German Village blew up. Schumann was forced to resign for false doctrine, which had been quite blatant. He is now a loud atheist, like another WELS Shrinker, Curtis Peterson. Nitz left for Arizona. St. Paul is a fraction of what it once was, after decades of Church GROWTH.
The Evil Continues
I was the only WELS pastor who objected to Church Growth and kept at it. Some voiced some objections and were shut down in various ways. I remember two of them who told a mutual friend, "We are going silent so we can get the calls we want." They got their calls as a reward.
Jay Webber told me that I should publish this and that. He never did, of course. He wanted to go to the Ukraine and did. I thought Webber and Kovaciny in the Ukraine together was the ultimate punishment for both of them.
WELS/ELS bullying methods do not stop with the person who dissents. They bully the entire family. Nothing is too low for them. Thus WELS and the Little Sect reproduce bullying and enforced brain-dead conformity.
The Church Growth Movement should really be called the Copy and Paste Movement, because the only thing LPR, Stolzenburg, Zehms, Kelm, WELS, and the ELS did was copy what the Enthusiasts promoted in the worst of their parishes.
Thus Glende is only doing what he was taught at his home congregation in German Village, his WELS schools, and in the officially supported WELS Church and Change sorority. The drama queens of Church and Change scream and sob like someone's baby sister whenever they are caught in their skullduggery. But they have no remorse about what they do to the laity and to those they choose to exclude.
Unfortunately, many in WELS think that is the only reality. A good number have grown up in towns where they never spoke to a non-WELS member. Like old-fashioned Mennonites, they are quick to shun and have deep emotional problems from being shunned.
The secrecy and lying are quite impressive in WELS. The Columbus pastors never told the truth about Stolzenburg and Zehms...or anything else. They even denied LPR was started to promote Church Growth. They said that the idiot vicar who wrote the paper about LPR did not know what he was talking about. That idiot vicar, David Peters, was later a doctoral student at Marquette, and his vicar's office was packed full of CG books when he left. He must have seen the light, because he became part of Issues in WELS, aka That Union Grove Bunch.
Deceit is the primary management method of WELS. Wayne Mueller denied CG in WELS while running all the CG programs. One of The Love Shack honchos came down to Columbus and suggested that Floyd was the best person to run the "Precious Is the Child" evangelism flop. Floyd smiled broadly. It was CG speaking to CG and showing that the leadership of WELS was behind him 100%, just as they were behind Al Just and William Tabor.
The laity and pastors are ordered to address the most grievous problems in one particular way, which is always wrong. Therefore, all questions end up being the reasons for getting rid of someone. Write a letter! - but the reply TOP SECRET EYES ONLY. So the leaders have rope for the hanging but their response, if revealed, is even more rope for the hanging. Neat system. Their Father Below doubtless looks up in awe at them.
They have no problem with brutalizing people, so their astonishing level of adultery and alcoholism are just symptoms of the deeper problem.
WELS is loveless because they have no Gospel. They teach 10,000 man-made laws replacing the 10 Commandments. They have no Gospel because everyone is born forgiven. The only things they really care about are utterly false - UOJ and Church Growth plagiarism.
Tim Glende is so clueless that he blogs to show how little he comprehends about being a pastor:
- He does not give his name, but he did slow down and tone down once I identified him as the author.
- He condemns Lutheran authors although he routinely plagiarizes Methodist-Babtists.
- He has nothing to offer but condemnation. There is no Gospel on his blog, no edifying quotations, no inspirational pictures. His idea of humor is to show people I know (named, no less) eating fecal matter from a toilet.
- Although DP Englebrecht seems as spineless and inept as the rest of the WE:S DPs, he is just as thuggish as Glende, because he endorses and encourages this behavior.
