Denominations - Especially The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - Are Pursuing and Scattering Their Dwindling Members.

 

The faithful Christians were slaughtered by predator beasts. Their peaceful  and prayerful acceptance shook the pagan audience to their very souls, and this began the conversion of the pagan West.

The tide has reversed. Now the denominations - especially The Big Five - ELCA-LCMS-WELS-ELS-CLC (sic) - are murdering the souls of their own members, driving them away and engorging themselves with the loot of foreclosed church buildings and endowments.

One church expert told a large crowd, "The prune churches, which used to be plums, are the easiest to lead. They have nothing to do!" I have seen that in church closures where the clergy staff hung onto their salaries until the end, trying to be busy with their social activism. For every 300 year old church (like the one next to the Philadelphia ELCA Seminary) there is another, like Historic St. John in Milwaukee, independent but grabbed by WELS and the Jeske posse. They changed the name a bit - "on the Hillside" - yuk, yuk.

ELCA planted their flag with the 2009 visit, which was soon followed by an effort to make each shrinking seminary into La Cage aux Folles.

The Big Five have repudiated their beginnings in the Reformation, a rejection proved with gusto in the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, 2017. Instead of shaking off the doom of Pietism, they pursued the toxins of Calvinism, Bogus Bibles, silly worship, and Druckerism.

"Am I cute? Or what!"

Wisconsin Sect - Studying Everything Except One Thing Needful

 

Groups addressing same old same old

Any number of groups have been carrying out their assignments to address various issues that are important to our called workers, congregations, accountants, and members. Here is an update on those groups and their assignments.

The Ministry Recruitment task force - already described exhaustively in a previous issue of Together - is set to have even fewer ministers
Chaired by Rev. Paul Prange, this task force was formed as a result of a resolution passed by the 2023 synod convention due to the significant shortage of pastors, teachers, and staff ministers. Its assignment is to look at all factors that impact the recruitment of called workers and bring recommendations for a synodwide effort to recruit and train more called workers. It will bring its recommendations to the 2025 synod convention.

Task force on critical theories about going with the flow
Chaired by Rev. Snowden Sims, this task force was assigned to evaluate the topic of critical theories and provide guidance to WELS called workers and members on how to understand and address these philosophies in light of Scripture. The task force will submit its recommendations to the Conference of Presidents, which will then produce and distribute a pastoral brief on the subject.

Theology curriculum task force celebrating the worst ever NIV
The theology curriculum task force is currently in an 18-month development of the components necessary for future content writers to create new instructional materials for WELS schools to use for the instruction of God’s Word. The task force wants the new curriculum to hold fast to our purposes of sharing God’s Word in its truth and purity with the next generation and meet the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms. One of its goals is to provide a curriculum that is primarily digital in format, which will make it possible to update the curriculum on an ongoing basis. The task force chairman is Mr. Jim Rademan. Mrs. Melanie Giddings is the curriculum coordinator.

Long-range committee Peter Drucker (tm) strategic planning task force
Chaired by Rev. Jonathan Hein, this task force is developing a new synod long-range strategic plan that will guide all areas of synodical mission and ministry. The six-year plan, entitled “Christ through us” (the theme of the 2025 synod convention), will be presented to the synod convention in 2025.

175th anniversary planning committee for the 200th, if we make it.
Chaired by Prof. Joel Otto, the committee has already begun to make plans for the celebration of the synod’s 175th anniversary in 2025. The theme for that celebration will be the same as the theme for the 2025 convention (“Christ through us”). Plans include a book that provides a pictorial history of the synod, video vignettes, an interactive online history of WELS, and a synodwide celebration Sunday in the fall of 2025.

Gender, sexuality, identity
A standing committee (not a perpetual task force), chaired by Rev. Greg Lyon, is developing resources for pastors, congregations, parents, and young people to help them deal with transgender and same-sex attraction issues that are becoming more common in our society and culture. We are trying to cut back on the gay activities and fun in prep school, GA, and college events. If pastors cross-dress with their elders at a church picnic, we will honor the pastor for his flexibility, wardrobe choices, and makeup.

Man/woman roles
The Conference of Presidents is continuing its work to develop its 15th pastoral brief on man/woman roles. The brief will be distributed as soon as it is completed.

Please remember these groups as they work to address important issues Mequonly, biblically, and evangelically.

Serving with you in Christ,
WELS President Mark Schroeder

Luther Was the Least Impressed by Dogmatics. He Explained the Scriptures.

Can't you see the ELCA-WELS - LCMS-ELDONUTs

 in Their Pointy Hats - Hugging Their Copies of Management by Objectives?

 "If they are dumb enough to follow me, they are dumb enough to follow anyone. Ja?"

 Or, as Valleskey vowed, "We will all fail together at once!"

 "I copied that from the men's room at Harvard, ja?"

 Drucker: "I am so schmart, I haf Paul Kelm and the WELS eating out of my claws, I mean, hands."

 

 

Guess Who Published This? - Last Century. MBO and Drucker

Friday, November 19, 1999

HAPPY 90^TH, PETER DRUCKER

The Wall Street Journal announced today that Peter Drucker turned 90 today. He is now at the age where people say, “He’s still alive?” Perhaps you are not as impressed as I am. Peter Drucker invented management, specifically Management by Objective, MBO. Scholars of the history of management theory may disagree, but I believe Drucker is the genius behind the Mission Statement. Every department of every business must have a Mission Statement. The business or institution must also have a Mission Statement.

People are drinking coffee and wondering, “Why is he going on about this?” The Church Growth people latched onto Peter Drucker material right away. Donald McGavran, trained in educational theory, was keen about statistics. His secular mindset and opposition to the efficacy of the Word fit together perfectly with Drucker’s theories. At some point someone decided that management must also have a vision for the future, not to mention passion. So now we hear politicians babbling about their vision and their passion.

Church bodies too. I was trained in Management by Objective, first in the Lutheran Church in America. Then the same theories were promoted in the Wisconsin Synod. I remember Church Growth guru James Huebner turning white when I mentioned Peter Drucker and Management by Objective. WELS is the last Lutheran synod to discover a fad and then thinks it is a secret from everyone else. When I joined Northwestern Mutual Life, they sold me a 3 ring notebook in which I could write down my goals, objectives, strategies. It was MBO all over again, but more fitting in a business.

I was curious about the close connection between Drucker and Church Growth. (They adopted him. I doubt whether he thought much about Fuller Seminary.) Then a newspaper ran a story about a mega-church in Texas. The article made a point about Management by Objective being the Bible for this Texas church. I visited the narthex of a fine old Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. The vestry voted to ask God for 10% increases in worship in each of the next three years! I thought, “Could this be? A Fuller graduate spoiling another church?” Yes, the priest was getting his Fuller degree and nagging his fellow priests about Church Growth at a future seminar.

In addition, when WELS and ELCA got together with the Missouri Synod at Snowbird, the president of the Drucker Institute spoke. In fact, all the speakers were either a) Church Growth; b) Management; c) ELCA; or d) liberal Reformed.

One WELS circuit pastor said this to me, “When WELS did not think much about itself as an institution, it ran well. Now that it is always talking about management, nothing is going well.” That was some years ago. I recall one of the seminarians bragging that the old fuddy-duddies were being pushed off the seminary faculty and out of the administration. WELS was going to be taught by sharp young pastors and managed by sharp young pastors. Some results: 1) a disastrous decline in membership while the population was growing and conservative churches were supposedly in style; 2) the arrest and conviction and imprisonment of various WELS church workers; 3) demoralization of the clergy; 4) closing two prep schools at a time of growing need and support of education, especially church workers; 5) a precipitous decline in church workers.

I just got an email forwarded about WELS health plan (VEBA) cost increases. Here is one sentence: “On Oct. 20, 1999, the VEBA Commission met to set the rates for Jan. 1,
2000. It had no choice but to raise premiums 25% on average. The rates
will vary by regions, but a family plan with $250 deductible will
increase in a range of $1,308 to $2,352 per year.”

I want to make something clear – the increase cannot be blamed on Church Growth or Peter Drucker. But this increase is another nail in the coffin. When synods go through huge increases in health care, the most flexible fund is the mission offering. When I was ordained in 1973, the health plan for my family cost $285 for the YEAR. It was paid in one lump sum as a minor budget item. My wife and I now pay about $4500 for coverage. When a synod goes through such increases, congregations are crushed by the increase. A large church has a large staff, so the pain is multiplied. A small church barely gets along, so it suffers.

Health care is going to be a major issue with any attempt to have congregations independent of the established synods. My wife was turned down by the CLC group health plan, in spite of promises made beforehand. But we were lucky to be moving to Minnesota, where a plan was established by law for uninsurable people. We were lucky again, if it can be called luck, to have the plan follow us to Arizona. Minnesota is happy to take our money on a monthly basis.

Happy Birthday, Peter Drucker. I would phone you and sing, but I think your lines are tied up by well-wishers from business magazines and church headquarters. There was a time when Lutheran leaders trusted another old man, by the name of Isaiah, and followed what he said. OK, he had some help in writing his book, but it was worth following for a long time. His version of management was a wee bit different:

KJV Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

Luther also wrote about management:

"Those, however, who set the time, place and measure, tempt God, and believe not that they are heard or that they have obtained what they asked; therefore, they also receive nothing."

            Martin Luther, Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, III, p. 172. John 16:23-30.        

"In like manner, St. Paul says that God's ability is thus proved, in that He does exceeding abundantly above and better than we ask or think. Ephesians 3:20. Therefore, we should know we are too finite to be able to name, picture or designate the time, place, way, measure and other circumstances for that which we ask of God. Let us leave that entirely to Him, and immovably and steadfastly believe that He will hear us."

            Martin Luther, Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed., John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, III, p. 179f. Ephesians 3:20.     

"And although we do at times depart from the Word, we should not therefore remain altogether away from it, but return again, for He makes good His Word. Even though man cannot believe it, God will nevertheless help him to believe it, and this He does without man's reason or free will and without man adding anything thereto."

            Martin Luther, Sermons of Martin Luther, 8 vols., ed. John Nicholas Lenker, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983, III, p. 76. John 16:16-23      

"If the world were willing to take advice from a simple, plain man--that is, our Lord God (who, after all, has some experience too and knows how to rule)--the best advice would be that in his office and sphere of jurisdiction everybody simply direct his thoughts and plans to carrying out honestly and doing in good faith what has been commanded him and that, whatever he does, he depend not on his own plans and thoughts but commit the care to God. Such a man would certainly find out in the end who does and accomplishes more, he who trusts God or he who would bring success to his cause through his own wisdom and thoughts or his own power and strength."

            Martin Luther, What Luther Says, An Anthology, 3 vols., ed., Ewald Plass, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959, III, p. 1151. Luke 5:1-11.  

"Let us, then, prepare ourselves to be patient and learn to bear the furious attacks and the blows of Satan, who is trying to tear the church of Christ to pieces and to establish his own church. We are not any better than the fathers. At the cost of much sweat and labor they, too, scarcely succeeded in their effort to preserve the Word and to snatch a few souls from the jaws of Satan."

            Martin Luther, What Luther Says, An Anthology, 3 vols., ed., Ewald Plass, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959, I, p. 280. Genesis 11:10ff.