Foot Traffic Down in ELCA, LCMS, WELS, ELS, CLC (sic). The Seminaries Are Collapsing, Too - They Have No Message

 This obscure but prescient meme illustrates how the Kudzu Vine of Church Growth has engulfed WELS, LCMS, and all the denominations. Staff Infection implies the self-anointed work of Larry Olson, WELS Fuller DMin, nicknamed Staff Infection by his peers, loathed by his students.

http://www.thearda.com/denoms/Families/F_90.asp 
-----------2017-------------2002--- 
ELCA -- 3,458,839 -- 5,038,006 
LCMS -- 1,968,641 -- 2,512,714 
LCMC -- 300,000 
NALC -- 142,000 

 "Just think how tiny WELS would be without decades of Church Growth training forced on everyone dumb enough to bow down to Baal!"

Don't Hesitate - Regurgitate!

My wife and I went to various events in the LCA. Sometimes I went alone, but I remember the one at Thiel College in 1978 where the national leaders did their Evangelical Outreach presentations. 

Like the smaller sessions, everyone had to learn Management by Objectives, pick goals and strategies, everything that I heard all over again from the WELS Church Growth gurus. The common themes were:

1. Peter Drucker's (MBO) parasitic attachment to Fuller Seminary;
2. The LCA-ALC-WELS-ELS-LCMS executives attending Fuller and forcing it on all their underlings;
3. Scary statistics.

Years later I had a letter from an ELS pastor who went to Fuller, served in Naples, Florida, and thought everyone should attend Fuller. He was on the Examination Committee!

In 1987, WELS-ELS acted like they had discovered Church Growth on their own. One person promoted the sanctified and sanctifying work of Paul Y. Cho. The required training that kept coming up in WELS was always Church Growth: 

• Valleskey, 
• Kelm, 
• Olson, 
• Huebner, and 
• Others even denser.

ELCA leaders adored Church Growth because it quantified their problems and gave them Calvinistic programs to follow. They naturally worked with WELS and LCMS executives in various insurance funded programs - all gigantic and expensive flops. But they were joined-at-the-wallet in promoting even more of the toxins.

ELCA is now at the final stage of Pietism - rationalism, Universalism, and social justice warrior campaigns. They have no thoughts of faith, so they find meaning in making society gay rather than somber.

The Synodical Conference leaders may have a little faith, but they are so ecumenical that they love every doctrine except their own. That leads them into turning their future pastors into little Church Growth/Missional executives. Instead of giving them the pastor guidance and Scriptural content of parish work, they provide gimmicks, slogans, and packaged answers. The seminaries pay a fortune and give up full-time income to be trained the same way they train salesmen on commission.

Is anything more symbolic of WELS than this?

Core Incompetence

The most significant cause in Lutheran failure is the lust for papal-style control. I keep up with the Roman Catholic scandals because they have reached the levels of Cardinal and Pope. There has been a winnowing of anyone normal in the priesthood, so the entire Roman structure aims at promoting evil, incompetent, greedy, power-hungry devils. Predator Cardinals like Spellman (RIP) made sure he had predator bishops, the bishops priests and seminaries full of idealistic young men. When asked about people finding their cardinal in NYC was having his limo pick up male prostitutes to bring to the residence, Spellman said, "No one would ever believe it." Until recently, few realized or believed it.

The LCMS, WELS, ELS, and CLC (sic) have a knack for elevating the least competent, most conflicted, dumbest clucks in the ministerium. Because they have established a structure of anti-Biblical, anti-Lutheran dogma, everyone is either numb, scared, or hoping for advancement. The scandals are covered up, because, as Spellman said, "No one would ever believe it." 

"Graph the Numbers" - Kent Hunter & Waldo Werning Cackled with Sulphuric Glee!Extracted from Juicy Ecumenism

Note that ELCA began with 5.3 million members and leadership trained at Fuller Seminary. WELS' Norm Berg mentioned his friendship with ELCA's Mac Minnick, Fulleroids both. They have taken the broad, easy path to perdition, and their synods with them.

As United Methodists look ahead toward next week’s special General Conference on human sexuality, there is a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to be gained by looking at the recent histories of other mainline Protestant denominations that have walked this road.



https://juicyecumenism.com/2019/02/15/happened-denominations-passed-one-church-plan/?fbclid=IwAR0zkQBELbOnDAQfIFrZJ7k_G66Y-UNxqwbLaMGFKprDeGU0KAhIeAKNM34

Rev. Donna Smith, who was pastoring an ELCA congregation in 2009, stated that her church gave people options, such as an assurance that “all gifts would go to the local congregation and local benevolent causes.” She said she knew of some congregations that directed all of their benevolence away from their synod and ELCA.

The ELCA’s numbers show a denomination that did not find unity and is now struggling greatly. A slew of congregations left the ELCA between 2009 and 2013, the first five years after the liberalizing change, with the vast majority of these departures coming in 2010 and 2011. In all, 675 congregations disaffiliated from the church, about two-thirds of the 954 that took a congregational vote to decide whether to leave.

The ECLA’s decline has continued far beyond the first two years when the exodus was greatest. The ELCA lost three percent of its congregations from 2016 to 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.

From 2009 to 2017, membership has decreased from 4,542,868 to 3,455,573, a drop of 24 percent. In that same period, the number of congregations also dropped significantly, from 10,348 to 9,039, a loss of 1,309 congregations or over 12 percent of them in a mere eight years. These number indicate that apart from entire congregations leaving, churches that stayed lost many people. Baptisms of children and adults combined have dropped 37 percent since 2009.

 WELS' own Mark and Avoid Jeske has been a leader in radicalizing ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS, one big dysfunctional family, united by Objective Justification.

The Continuous War - But Only One Side Is Fighting. Do Not Let the Walther Cult and Mythologies Quench the Gospel

The war to replace the Chief Article - Justification by Faith - began in America with Bishop Martin Stephan's cult. He learned the Easter absolution of the world at Halle University. Stephan attended two universities but never graduated.

CFW Walther associated with Pietists before he met Stephan and participated in a Spener-inspired cell group with his friends. When their abusive Pietist-guru moved away and died, they latched onto Stephan, another abusive Pietist. Stephan specialized in young women, one serving as his favorite, though he was married. He took her along on their voyage to America, with his healthy oldest child. He left his ailing wife and children (dying from his syphilis) behind.

Zion on the Mississippi and other sources make it clear that everyone in the Stephanite leadership knew about the bishop's STD (not a degree, mind you) and flagrant adultery. After all, he stayed with his mistress at one spa and told his wife, who came to plead with him, to go home.  Stephan was under house arrest when he told his cult to go to America with him. They left so he could abandon most of his family and take along his mistresses. Their syphilis outbreak provided Walther with an excuse to organize a riot to rob, threaten, kidnap, and depose the bishop, whose lifetime office he signed onto - when they landed in the Big Easy (New Orleans).

Walther claimed - without dispute - that Stephan taught him the Easter absolution of the world, false doctrine that CFW never abandoned. Pietists, with a nod toward Halle, have kept the pollution alive. ELCA is based upon Pietism, like WELS, the ELS, and Missouri. Adoration of Spener Pietism, its ecumenical taint, and cell groups have combined to make Universalism the common thread of all mainline groups.

Face it - WELS cult prisoners and Missouri loyalists - all your leaders want to be loved and accepted by the ELCA radicals. ELCA leaders are highly educated and much smoother in their deceptive ways. ELCA is still double the size of the LCMS and they get gifts of $30 million at a time.

The brazen attitude of the OJists is magical, a marvel, the Seventh Blunder of the Modern World. They only mean the universal absolution of the world - without faith - when they use the term Justification. If they happen to talk about Justification or even Subjective Justification, they slink into OJ immediately.

They let people imagine that SJ is Justification by Faith. They let people think that OJ is the Atonement. But - take away the fleece for a moment - and the claws and fangs appear. They cannot abide Justification by Faith, or Luther (except when misquoting him), and stick together like army ants.

 The ELS leader, Pope John the Malefactor, was called to be the New Testament professor without having earned a college degree. That should remind Bethany Seminary supporters of Bishop Stephan, his limited education, and his Objective Justification.

The Little Sect on the Prairie
When the ELS pastors get disturbed by the truth, they run to one of their own and ask, "What is he saying? Tell us, Ginger Guru."

The last time there was a real confrontation about UOJ, it came from two farming families in Kokomo, Indiana. WELS is still lying about that, because the statements the farmers objected to came from WELS ignoramus JP Meyer and an old OJ dispute. Since 1983 or so, no one has brought this up for any length of time.

The forces of their Father Below have expanded the reach of their demonic dogma. Rewards and great peace are granted them for their energetic apostasy - but in this world only. "Let not many be teachers, for they will get the greater condemnation." (James 3:1, Jackson Surfer Dude Paraphrase)

My actuaries say I have 20 more years to blog - at the most - and perhaps far less. People will have to do their own research and fighting for the Chief Article. Follow the example of the Qanons and do your own digging.