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| Groeschel and Andy Stanley shared a tender moment about diversity in their rainbow congregations. They are the gold standard for WELS leaders - believe it or not. |
http://ichabodthegloryhasdeparted.blogspot.com/2013/04/wels-welfare-queens.html
Mary Thompson (aka California) has made this point many times - when the church depends on business and government to keep it going, it has sold its birthright for a bowl of lentil soup.
Glende, Jeske, and Patterson are welfare queens because they spend so much time and effort getting outside funds instead of trying to support others. In effect, they steal from the poor in their own denomination, so they can brag, "Look at how much money we have."
The Mafia has a lot of money, too.
The Child-Care Business - Disguised as a Christian Academy
I believe Cascione got into this early - get guvmint subsidies for running a child-care business. Buy the building with it. Hire your wife and her friends as teachers. Give yourself a salary for supervising.
Patterson and many other WELS business-clergy have started day care businesses marketed as Christian academies. They are not schools at all. No one ever said Kindergarten was school. The Germans invented them - children's gardens - to get them ready for socialized education.
These alleged Christian academies are pre-K and Kindergarten. They end up requiring guvmint regulation, so the control switches to the federal and state authorities.
When the regulators decide to make churches engage in pan-sexual families, pan-sexual marriages, and every other rainbow possibility, the prostituted churches will have to go along to keep their funds.
Thrivent Will Buy Your Soul for a Farthing
Thrivent operates the same way. They offer peanuts to congregations, with the demand that this audacious offer of $47.15 in matching funds be earned with a gracious announcement in the bulletin and newsletter (provide proof). They are not giving anything, but buying entire lists of potential customers for almost nothing.
When one congregation got that offer, they laughed. They did not need the pittance and were not going to favor one business over another.
Church as Mall Kiosk
Junk for Jesus, candy, and other sales also prostitute a congregation, because they say to the community,
"We cannot or will not support ourselves with offerings, so we will use our tax advantage to undercut genuine businesses that pay taxes and required benefits."
The church kiosk mentality makes people think of selling rather than giving whenever they are short of funds. For all the talk about being "passionate about sharing Jesus," they are really greedy for living luxuriously off the gullibility of others.
The rot spreads and soon everyone is singing the same tune and bowing to secular and business authorities. What choice do we have? We need the loot.
WELS used that excuse when they shocked everyone by participating in a joint leadership program with ELCA and Missouri at Snowbird - insurance funded. WELS even did evangelism with ELCA - insurance funded.
One DP lamely defended working with ELCA by saying, "If we didn't spend the money, they would get it."
