Stealth Update: WELS Members Waking Up To Church and Change Menace

Bailing Water has WELS members reporting they never heard of Church and Change. They also say their pastors know nothing about it.

This is an actual exchange with a WELS pastor:

The other guy: "Church and Change is no more. President Gurgel took it apart. It doesn't exist."

Me: "Oh yeah? Then why are they registering people for their next conference [2007] from the WELS.net website? They have their own jumpword."

[Later it dawned on me that the head of technology for WELS, Martin Luther Spriggs, was the former pastor who gave Willow Creek sermons verbatim from the pulpit. His pastoral work and Willow Creekery are absent from his posted bio.]

I kept publishing the facts about the conference, which the WELS pastor did not know was happening until I told him. The jumpword was removed but the conference went on. Another Church and Change conference is scheduled for 2009. They booked Babtist Ed Stetzer last August, but their stealthy website does not admit to Stetzer's invitation, three months later.

Finally, Church and Change admitted to the event, but not to the keynote speaker:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Conference 09
Nov 5th - 7th
Wyndham Milwaukee Airport Hotel and Convention Center

C&C events are a great place to network with people who have similar ministries, situations and problems. Come, learn and benefit from everyone's experience!


More information is coming soon!

Church and Change is run from The Love Shack, WELS headquarters. One bored member, Bruce Becker, is in charge of Parish Shrinkage. Yes, they have a whole department devoted to shrinking the size of WELS. And they are effective. WELS has lost members ever since Ron Roth was the first Church Shrinkage leader at The Love Shack. He took on that role as editor of The Evangelism Life Line, TELL.

Ron Roth began as editor of TELL, which was "devoted to the cause of Church Growth," in 1977.

The editors of TELL were:
Ron Roth: 1977 - 1984.
Paul Kelm: 1984 - 1988.
Robert Hartman: 1988 - 19892.

TELL did not die, but expanded into Perish Leadership, which showed an expanding readership how their congregations could perish on Church Growth doctrine from Fooler Seminary and Willow Crick.

So, as the anvil salesman from The Music Man, would have told WELS members: "You square-toed hicks. You've been flim-flammed...He's a bare faced, double shuffle, two bit, thimble rigger."

Yes, for 31 years WELS members have paid the salaries of ordained Lutheran pastors devoted to the cause of Church Growth. And one of them, Paul Kelm, is coming back.

The Church and Change conference is designed to let the Shrinkers all network with each other. I thought they did that already at The Love Shack.

Millions of dollars of members' offerings have been spent supporting these weevils and what are the results? WELS received the largest charitable gift ever from St. Marvin Schwan and is now broke, deep into debt from misusing designated funds.

SP Schroeder is trying to clean up their messes and the Church Shrinkers want him out.