The Frog in the Kettle is Barna's book about how to boil alive the church members by introducing change slowly so they will notice it. Barna is a Fuller and WELS favorite. One WELS member told me that his pastor gave him the book to read.
It is bad enough to boil members alive, following Barna - but to brag about it? Try not to laugh the next time some WELS leader talks about fellowship principles or Walking Together. Stalking Together would be a theme more honest.
So many denizens of The Guilt Factory--aka The Love Shack--took courses at Trinity Divinity (Eee Free), Deerfield, that their fave school listed them twice in their own catalogue. Can anyone connect the dots between that and The CORE, which plagiarizes the same basic materials? Does anyone wonder why nothing is done about The CORE?
Fuller Seminary is the most popular school for leaders of the LCMS and WELS, with ELS and ELCA studying there as well. All the WELS foreign and American mission leaders were trained there, plus David Valleskey and Frosty Bivens. The "consultants" Larry Olson, Jim Huebner, and Paul Calvin Kelm were trained there, too.
Steve Witte was one of the founders of Church and Change. He got a drive-by DMin at Gordon Conwell. WELS immediately promoted him to the paid position of Asian Lutheran Seminary Board. That will keep Shrinker Lawrenz in line! They must laugh at Church and Change conventions - about how they keep one another employed on the synod's dime. What fun.
Willow Creek is the crown jewel of the WELS worker training system. Like Trinity Divinity in the vicinity, Willow Creek is close enough to run over for continuing education. One of my pastoral friends in WELS told me about being given free training by the mission board - at Willow Creek. After that, his bulletins said (like WC's) - We do not expect visitors to give to our church. Blah. Blah.