Most of the discussion sites for alleged Lutherans are filled with trivia and ennui, but I still look them over for glimmers of news. They would never post that a cross-dressing Church and Changer is going to lead a national synodical conference. So they publish the obvious, long after everyone has noticed the same trends.
Years ago, I predicted the closing of SynCon Lutheran colleges. Now SpenerQuest is discussing the same topic. WELS hastened to have their teacher's college, DMLC, take over their pastor's college, NWC. The math is simple: 1 + 1 = .75. Nevertheless, they still have MLC, Bethany (ELS), and Wisconsin Lutheran College within a short drive - not to mention the LCMS colleges.
They may deny it, but LCMS-WELS have a morganatic merger where they plan together, such as deciding which units to close down.
All the schools of higher education decided to grow their buildings from student loans and jacked up tuition prices. The result is overbuilt colleges just in time for online education that requires no buildings. Many students have concluded that they do not need to spend $40,000 to $60,000 on two years of required courses that are available in community colleges. If everyone has to work full-time to pay for college, online courses are necessary to keep up the cash flow. That drains the campus of cash-flow from renting dorms and selling wretched school food.
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| St. Ignatius Loyola Seminary is primed for a wave of MDiv students. |
On a brighter note, the ALPB Online Forum (a cure for insomnia) has posted membership losses.
LCMS - From 1970 to 2012 - 877,349 fewer baptized members.
Roughly half of that loss came between 2010 and 2018, with Matt Harrison as the Synod President.
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| One way to grow WELS is to publish an open letter about ELCA being so radical and weird. ELCA would gladly feature cross-dressing at their high schools, colleges, seminaries, and parishes. That was WELS? I forgot. |
Mirthless Mark Schroeder became WELS SP in 2007, the blessed year of this blog's birth. I do not have the WELS shrinkage rate for those years, but Schroeder recently bragged that Missouri was losing members twice as fast as WELS. Imagine what would have happened without Church and Change, Change or Die!, and the constant drumbeat of Willow Creek insights derived from Fulleroid diplomas!
The totals for WELS are bound to be much lower. They never grow out of GA/HB hazing tricks.
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| The pseudo-confessionals want us to believe that their Calvinist studies do not yield Objective Justification and Church Growth. |
