solafide (http://solafide.myopenid.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Will the Next Generation of Evangelists Be Laity?":
GJ: "So congregations all over WELS have taken on debt and given up piles of cash, all in the hope of making their church come alive from the smell of fresh paint and carpet glue. Fellowship Hall! Lookit that - yet the membership falls from alienating members and becoming obsessed with money and bricks.
The snake devours itself. Any layman who objects is beaten like a rented mule and shunned as a leper."
Sola Fide:
I've seen this time and time again in the WELS. Congregations are told that all of their problems will go away if they throw money at consultants and a new/remodeled building. Every time, the congregation gets the shaft, unless their pastor is one of the blessed UOJ'ers with connections, like Glende.
Also, it seems that MLC had another contemptuous (I love this term, so I'll kelm it) chapel service last night.
http://www.livestream.com/mlcchapel/video?clipId=pla_10feebd3-7b75-4e8b-8e35-7e1451671dc7
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| This was Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Urbana, Illinois, on the bustling university campus. |
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| Now this church is Eastern Orthodox, and Bethlehem Lutheran had to be re-named Star of Bethlehem. |
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| The interior looked good for a church. The Eastern Orthodox added an icon wall, but Glende wanted a coffee bar. Really - a coffee bar. |
GJ - Past is prologue with Glende. He was a bully in college, a bully in his first call--which he loaded with debt in a cornfield, and abandoned--and a bully now.
He sold off a paid-for church to the Eastern Orthodox, rented digs for a time, and got the mission board to build on the far edge of town, surrounded by Illinois corn. To his credit, the plans called for a coffee bar! Cutting edge or emergent zombie?
A UOJer with connections is a case of the blind (Uncle John Brug) leading the blind (Tim the Bully). How does that little parable end?
