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| "Here is our new Youth Pastor. He is so creative!" |
Visiting gave me some insight about the quadrilateral collapse of the Lutheran sects - ELCA-WELS-LCMS-ELS. They aimed at the wrong target and hit it square - "relevant entertainment so we can keep the youth in the church."
They all decided to preserve the image of "youth ministry" by having large meetings with celebrity guests of some type.
What I heard - from an ELCA and a Missouri perspective - was the incompetence and poor leadership at these ELCA or LCMS events.
I saw the same things at the WELS event I suffered through in Columbus, Ohio. The Wisconsin sect is much smaller in numbers, but they mismanaged just as poorly, such as having the adults in a different building than the youth occupied. Naturally that OSU leadership was the Skestos gang of Zehms, Stolzenburg, and Schroeder - all four divorced. They had Pastor Stadler (divorced) and the gang. Stadler gave a children's sermon where he made water in a jug go black and then clear again. A professor's son said to me, "Greg, thanks for not puking on me during Stadler's sermon."
I am looking at St. James now. They had an "alter guild" in 1955. I hate to ask.
Marc Schroeder, whose Prince of Peace church was kicked out of WELS, was the vicar at St. James, which was also kicked out of WELS.
So how did the great Columbus youth conference become loaded with divorced pastors and deafened by a no-talent rock band? Skestos' son was in the rock band.
I never went to an LCA national youth conference. The numbers never add up - tons of kids, poor supervision, a splash for the magazine and then done. An OSU staff member said the WELS conference was the worst behaved group of kids they had. One of WELS kids dropped a bottle on a vehicle, from an upper storey. The car or truck was delivering pizza; $800 damage; no one confessed. VP Paul Kuske was voted out of office by the Michigan District, a rare treat in hide-bound WELS. He and the late DP Robert Mueller achieved the genius level of punishing what was good and promoting what was evil.
