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| Joint meeting of ELCA, WELS, and LCMS Managers: They do not lead - they manage. When people still read Christian News, they saw a photo of three synod presidents together, conferring at Snowbird, a deluxe resort. They brought along their Wormtongues to deny this ever happened. ELCA bragged about it, with a photo of the three. WELS did their normal shuffle-left, shuffle-right routine. LCMS, haughty and absurd, pretended to be the Big Cheese - WELS and ELCA were blessed to be with Missouri! Nobody does it better (bragging, lying, accusing). I confess - I insisted on Herman Otten printing the photo of the three synod presidents together. WELS went the extra mile, lying to its members. I recall one District Manager being sent around to deny it happened. The problem the managers are facing is simple - lying will not get them anywhere now. They have been building bigger barns with their dedication toward taking away the estates of elderly people - Irrevocable Charitable Trusts - sold by Thrivent, a company that had to merge to stay afloat. How delicious is that? Once the Charitable Trust is sold to the elderly, it is locked up in the synod vault and protected from nasty heirs who did not know that was happening - ingrates! More than likely, giving it to the church was somehow changed into giving it to the Synod. The "Giving Counselors" - more honestly known as the Taking Counselors - get a commission. The Taking Counselors are insurance salesmen who must take a state-wide test before they can sell anything being promoted. When a District Pope got his hands on a factory, whose funds were to be shared with the widow, he somehow found a way to destroy the entire, profitable business. The widow sued the synod and won, and the Wormtongues told people, "We have to be more careful about the gifts we choose to accept." That District Pope was voted into office as the Synod Pope. That was just a review of some things going on, just a teaspoon of facts. The big reality is the national collapse happening right now. College buildings are not fungible assets - they are stationary and eating up cash, unlike the synodical doctrines du jour, and not easily turned into money. Something could be done in each case, but no manager wants to do anything:
ELCA has been hard at work on its seminaries for some time. I knew something was up when the ELCA managers confessed to changing the ownership of the failing schools. They were stingy with details, but it amounted to turning the seminaries into smaller packages, even new locations, so they could sell off the old campus. Right now, beloved Gettysburg is hoping the city can tear down old dorms, make some money, and erect a building useful for the city. The big old seminaries of ELCA began getting their haircuts - a term used when bonds collapse and the owners have to accept a big loss:
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