Gottesdienst Online: Memo to Synod: Mind Your Own Business: "Naiveté can get one into trouble. I should have smelled something fishy when I received a request from the LCMS International Center to have my parish participate in a “Perceptions of Ministry Inventory,” a survey designed “to enhance the formation and professional development of parish pastors”; had I been paying closer attention, I might have wondered why the Board for Pastoral Education and the Council of Presidents wanted to assure me that my “privacy and anonymity will be preserved throughout the process.”"
'via Blog this'
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GJ - WELS did something like this. A circuit pastor was furious about this and wrote a letter.
Soon he was out of the ministry.
Read the article and ask where millions of dollars go. In fact, you will stop asking.
1 comments:
Allegedly, the forthcoming emphasis for the WELS Stewardship Sunday is an emphasis upon time and talents of the laity. Recently, I heard a pastor call it "our ministry", as in "everyone is a pastor". There are several aspects of this attitude which bear emphasis. First, there is a downgrading of pastoral ministry, especially as it applies to the Means of Grace. Secondly, this places emphasis upon the laity as being stakeholders. It is akin to a communitarian approach to public ministry. The effect of this is to make members hamsters on a treadmill. This approach manifests itself with a nonstop parade of committee meetings, agendas, workshops, and lame "Bible studies". Great emphasis is placed upon members serving, with continued reminders that the "ball is in their court". The "technician approach" is undertaken, with members getting the impression that all one has to do is flip the right switches and tweak the controls, and the plans will fall into place. Plausible deniability is built in to this with certain Scripture passages that are proof text-ed to support the effort. What you end up with are members who no longer believe in the Efficacy of the Word and have instead become small m Methodists.
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