These truths are self-evident, whether leaders acknowledge or deny them. Verification will come when they heatedly denounce this item as false, misleading, slanderous, violating the Eighth Commandment, and "what do you expect from Ichabod?" and "ba-zingo!":
- There are virtually no calls because the vacancy rate is below 5%;
- There is almost zero movement among Pastors, and nowhere for guys to go who get into trouble or whose churches close;
- Still, pastors are burning out at an increasing rate ;
- More and more small congregations are consolidating or closing; parish schools too;
- Few, if any true missions will be opened at all anymore; those that do will be spin-offs of prosperous churches, and/or in rich areas
- Neither prep school is safe; both will be closed within the next decade;
- MLC should also close;
- Recruiting should stop altogether; soon WELS won’t be able to find places for half of the grads, even from small classes ;
- WLC can be and eventually will be the feeder school for the seminary.
In other words, the synod is downsizing, and whether Schroeder or anyone else knows it or wants it to happen, it's going to come about.
Many – and I do mean many – Pastors will very soon find themselves as surplus, and no longer needed or wanted, especially relatively expensive old goats. Young ones who don’t or won’t play ball will be out on their ears faster than ever.
The WELS reminds me more and more of the old Ottoman Empire, and as it was dying some people were picking it clean, but many others were getting put up against walls and shot. WELS is the “sick old man of American Lutheranism.”
The ELS is already dead, like the old Austria/Hungary Empire; just that nobody has bothered to pull the plug yet.
ELCA is the old Soviet Empire, unraveling as we speak.
LCMS is the decadent west, including USA; financially broke, morally bankrupt, and theologically dead.
Nota bene - The opinion expressed above reflects what I have published before, but it also comes from others in WELS who are in the know.
