Transferring the Sexually Abusive Church Workers. LCMS, WELS, ELS, ELCA, CLC (sic)

Lutherans need to clean up their own habits.

bruce-church (https://bruce-church.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Lake George pastor’s bail set at $1 million in sex...":

LCMS hierarchy pretends its Catholic, and transfers around pedophile:

http://steadfastlutherans.org/?p=18016 

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Steadfast

Recently in the same circuit as my first call there has been a horrible set of news.  One of the men who shepherded congregations (he is a lay minister only but was allowed to and acted fully as a pastor) was brought up on charges for felony criminal sexual conduct with a minor.  In a small town, and in a rural community this sends ripples across the whole region.

But this is not just a story about a man who has fallen into great sin right now because this is not the first time this man has been in this situation.  The news story linked below reports that this man, who is still on the LCMS roster, had first been convicted of sex crimes against a minor in 1983 when he as a Lutheran principal had a three year sexual relationship that began with a 10 year old child at the school he oversaw.  He was convicted for this.

Here is the story (or at least half of it, the second half will be coming out on Wednesday).

http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/article/id/32090/

Now some questions -

How did this man become a “lay minister”? His record shows that in 1989 he graduated from Mequon.  How was this even possible to go through the lay ministry program there with such a past?

Did the various District Presidents (1983 Minnesota South; 1989 South Wisconsin; 1989 Minnesota North) know this?  If so, how did the various District Presidents allow this to happen?  Were none of those men concerned with this man having access to children again and again in ministry situations (a position of trust)?  If they did not know, how could this happen, what level in the certification/placement/call process needs to be changed to make sure that men that are not above reproach are not put into congregations?

What sort of things can be done SYNODWIDE to find out if there are more of these men (and women in the case of teachers) serving in situations where sheep are vulnerable to their abusive behavior?  What would need to happen for a SYNODWIDE background check for each worker?

As we saw the Roman Catholics suffer dearly for their cover-ups of these kind of situations, is there a way in which we can SYNODWIDE show due diligence to correct this situation, make those who are responsible take their responsibility, and prevent future occurrences?

There is something horribly wrong with the lack of oversight (or perhaps willful negligence) in this case which allowed a man who had raped a ten year old for three years and was convicted to become in all functional reality a pastor serving congregations.

We will have to wait for the second half of the article to come out on Wednesday, but my hope is that those people who may be guilty of such negligence would be considering their role in this horrific act and now crippling blow to congregations that this man served (not to mention the victim and family).

Now here is my suggestion:

Pray for the people involved in this: the victim and family of the victim; for Mr. Schauer and his family; for Trinity Lutheran, Lake George; for Immanuel Lutheran, Cass Lake; for Immanuel Lutheran, Courtland; for the Minnesota North District and the Bemidji Circuit; for the pastors involved in caring for wounded and wronged sheep; for Synodical officials who have to deal with this with integrity and compassion.

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GJ - Nicollet County. I know of another case like that. People should ask Steve Kurtzahn about how the CLC (sic) handled incest.

WELS members and pastors have told me about numerous homosexuals ordained and moved around the synod. The Michigan District of WELS only had problems with clergy adultery when people knew the truth - then the praesidium took their revenge against the innocent while protecting the guilty.

What did WELS do when Joel Hochmuth confessed earlier to dealing in heinous homosexual man-boy porn? They did nothing, then professed shock that the FBI showed up at The Love Shack, shock that their Director of Communications was a multiple-felon. But they immediately pronounced his forgiveness, just before he pleaded innocent. UOJ.

Missouri and ELCA have long histories of doing the same.

Why is so little done? When I mentioned the $40 million lawsuit that ELCA lost, because they ordained a known homosexual predator, Paul McCain's expert theologian began yelping that he knew nothing of it, etc etc.

That is a typical reaction, which is used to keep anything from happening, even when it is known and recorded in the official magazine of ELCA.

PS - The solution is to contact an attorney and SNAP and sue the synod leaders until they wise up. They did not even begin to weed out the criminals until the lawsuit costs piled up.