rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "The WELS Hymn of the Day - Hot Potato":
The daycare craze is most certainly reactionary driven. In fact, it appears as though most of what WELS congregations take on is that way. This is the same pattern that today's navel gazing evangelicalism follows. There is not a dime's worth of difference between most churches out there as they have become nothing more than a book of the month club (Relation-slips, Purpose Driven, Fireproof, etc) or whatever the latest fad is. Day care centers appeal to dual income households, especially the higher end of what is left of a middle class. Even the adult instruction is a fast track to quickly increasing membership. It is now called "Basic Bible truths", reflecting the dumbed down nature and lack of catechesis. My people perish for a lack of knowledge. The doctrinal indifference from all of this is a trademark of Pietism.
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GJ - The Church and Changers got their trotters in the trough for this fad. They changed Lutheran Elementary Schools into Christian Academies, which are limited to pre-school and Kindergarten. In most states these are regulated with mandated high-paying jobs (for baby-sitting) filled by parish insiders.
Congregations like to start these as Lutheran schools, to fool the faithful, but a center limited to the little ones from the area is not a Lutheran school, not even a "Christian Academy." It is a daycare center, a business.
To keep the prices low, due to competition from other denominations, the church daycare has to be subsidized with a free building, free rent, free utilities, free insurance, and cash for staff.
I remember people being shocked by the Community countries warehousing small children in daycares so their mothers could work for the State. Now this is accepted as normal in America. Are we richer? Are the children better off?
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| I'll skip the church luncheon, thank you anyway. |
California:
WELS is hopping on the secular womb to tomb concept of institutional care (meddling) being promoted by public schools, encouraged by foundations and corporate interests. The Master Plan for Early Learning in the county where I reside in California makes a point of explaining the change in terminology from "preschool" to "early learning". It was done to reinforce the agenda of a seamless transition from birth to post secondary education, instead of the mindset of something called "preschool" before "real school begins".
That same master plan for early learning calls for prenatal visits to prospective parents, by school representatives. Truly whom to tomb. If the WELS copycats want to get in on the ELE bandwagon, are they willing to go all the way by setting up prenatal or regular home visits with the non church members availing themselves of the ECE facilities provided by the congregations? Maybe they could baptize the non churched member's children just out of womb if they are patterning themselves as the facsimile of the secular government early learning agenda? Do you think the non member parents of WELS early learning academies would go for that?
