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| The theme of Barna's book is that introducing gradual change will work over time, just like slowly boiling a frog in a kettle - except frogs are smarter than Lutherans - they jump out early. |
One WELS member wrote to me:
The current news is that the NIV84 fair use might allow them to use it longer. We'll see. Maybe they're just telling people that, so they come to the conventions and say "Oh my, we can't use it! We thought we could, but we can't. We have to approve the NIV2011 NOW!"
You can buy Barna's The Frog in the Kettle for as little as one penny. Long ago I ran into a WELS member whose pastor gave it to him to read.
George Barna has been a must-read author for WELS and Missouri for decades.
I have often mentioned Process or Diaprax, as researched by ChurchMouse, Rogue Lutheran, California, and others.
The Frog in the Kettle is a children's version of the same, but how well it has worked! Long ago, John Lawrenz gave a "sermon" on how everything had to change. Mark Jeske gave lecture on everything changing and how the church had to change with it.
That is true of business - Sam Walton used the same words for Walmart, but he was able to build an organization rather than destroy it. The church is not a business. Those in love with business should go out and try their hand at it, to see if they know as much as they imagine.
ELCA is a good example of Diaprax working. They began with faking total participation, even though they mocked people behind their backs. One pastor, before the merger, brushed aside all objections, saying loudly in the bus to the Toronto meeting, "Maybe so, but I believe in THE PROCESS." As long as people are swindled into believing the process will only do good stuff, they go along with each step.
Missouri and WELS did not "study" Church Growth until it was firmly established in their synods. WELS handed the "study" over to David Valleskey, who adored everything from Fuller, and studied there with his buddy F. Bivens. Like Waldo Werning, both have bragged about being there and have also denied it.
I left Paul McCain's office at the Purple Palace while Kent Hunter (DMin, Fuller) was walking in, to advise all the LCMS District Popes. Oh, how they must have grinned as he pedaled his snake oil.
The McCain-Barry surrender to Church Growth was immediate and total, so no one should be shocked at the inroads today. McCain complained about CG in Missouri before his two years in the parish were up. However, he has dedicated his modest skills to eliminating justification by faith.
For perspective - all the parts of ELCA were once far more Lutheran than Missouri and WELS are today. But this apostasy is not on the agenda in Missouri and WELS.
I still have the booklet that the ELS published, attacking the Missouri Synod by name for tolerating false doctrine. The booklet was signed by the ELS leaders, even though they were in fellowship with Missouri. Now the ELS endorses Church Growth, Emergent Church, and the NNIV (by only quietly dissing it).
Here is the booklet - A Letter to the Pastors and Professors of the Missouri Synod. The date is 1939. The signers are C. Anderson, chairman.
N. A. Madson, Secretary.
H. M. Tjernagel.
S. C. Ylvisaker.
They addressed doctrinal indifference regarding Missouri working with the old ALC.
"The NNIV is not a Bible to be read lightly. It should be thrown, hard against the wall." Apologies to Dorothy Parker.
Not long ago, any man could go to seminary and pay very little for tuition, because his church body felt it was important to support tuition when they asked men to stay in school four extra years. A gradual increase in tuition has turned seminary students into walking, talking debt carriers. But the new debt load is not on anyone's agenda.
Not long ago, church executives made modest salaries, and there were precious few of them. Now the top two CPH men make a total of $500,000 in salaries and benefits.
Not long ago, the WELS synod president worked out of his own congregation. Naumann began the process of living and working like an executive. Mischke had an office at NPH, and his wife Gladys was his sexretary. Now SP Schroeder owns two office buildings and claims not to know that his Director of Communications was committing multiple felonies in The Love Shack.
This is "mission money" in ELCA: The district collects all the money and keeps half of it for salaries. They send it to headquarters, and those people keep the rest for salaries. Precious little goes to anything worthwhile. World Hunger money goes to support lobbyists in DC and all the state capitals, to promote the ELCA-Thrivent agenda of homosexual ordination and abortion on demand. But they put starving African children on the World Hunger envelopes and posters. They never put a fat lobbyists hoisting a cocktail at yet another party with the politicians.
The first DC lobbyist for the LCA got paid a princely salary for having an affair with his assistant (a woman in this case). The LCA fired both of them and reported the news. WELS today would promote both to better positions and attack anyone who dared leak the facts.
Mission money is the same in WELS, Missouri, and the ELS. Most of it goes to princely salaries and benefits. They consider Thrivent money their own to blow on pet projects with ELCA (while denying it). World missions means sending synodical favorites around the world for free. It is a scam, folks, but nobody objected while it was building up, or the few that did were given the Left Foot of Fellowship. Shunning works, especially when everyone shuns the non-shunners.
The Communists had the Iron Curtain, but the SynConference has the Ice Curtain. Anyone with a brain cell working or a practical knowledge of the Bible is moved beyond the Ice Curtain, doomed to think on his own and enjoy freedom of worship without Holy Mother Synod on his back 24/7.
People fear the Ice Curtain so much that they often surrender in advance, out of fear, just as Iraqis surrendered to press helicopters in Gulf War I.
Not long ago, it was national news that the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, produced by the Commies at the National Council of Churches, deleted the Virgin Birth prophecy of Isaiah 7:11. That was changed back (Diaprax), but the process to move away from the KJV had just begun. Now the LCMS endorses and sells the ESV, a Calvinist revision of the RSV.
The KJV and its many modern revisions are not even on the agenda for Lutherans. Not long ago, the main translator of the KJV, William Tyndale, studied under Luther and Melanchthon so he would do a better job with his English Bible.
Not long ago, people died for the faith. Now they assassinate their friends in order to support the Fuller/ELCA agenda.
