The Current ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC Leaders Marched Everyone into the Slough of Despond. 'Twas All about the Benjies.

"This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground." 

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, available free online from The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry.

Someone wrote to ask "Is WELS still engaged in hazing students in their schools?" 

I have not been asked to attend a WELS hazing event in a long time, but I assume that hazing continues as part of WELS' DNA. John Brenner, SJ, told students who objected that "GA has some problems but does good overall." The students who objected, face to face with Brenner, were pushed out of Mordor and went to Bethany Seminary.

 The dates, the confession of Enthusiasm, and the baloney are all here in one convenient graphic.

Four of the ring-leaders cheerfully posed for this portrait of their follies.

 In WELS, too, they get calls into the ministry.

I know about the hazing at the prep schools, college, and seminary, from what I witnessed. 

Back to the main topic. All the seminaries are collapsing, especially the mainline ones. Lutherans used to be distinctive, but their addled, boozy, and adulterous leaders marched them into corporate planning and Fuller Seminary growth.

 WELS-ELS, LCMS have adopted women's ordination through the Yellow Brick Road of raising money via Thrivent and various pan-religious foundations. As Mark and Avoid Jeske might say, "The Germans are gone but the money is flowing."

The ELS-WELS leaders actually thought Marvin Schwan money would bless them with beautiful buildings, which is all they needed, right? 

ELCA-WELS-ELS-LCMS-CLC were hilarious or tragic in their handling of Church Growth. Even before merger, the LCA was so far up the Fuller sewer they could see Rome ahead of them. I heard the same exercises in the LCA that WELS used, only from the LCA a few years earlier.

At the same time, WELS was denying any connection to Church Growth while promoting it full steam ahead but 10 years behind.

 This seminarian at Luther (ELCA) is now ordained. WELS students have done the same thing and found themselves rewarded with calls.

Waldo Werning was a good example of a man selling his repackaged Fuller garbage to the LCMS (Trinity Bridgeport, Christian News), WELS, and ELS. Werning bragged about going to Fuller (like Valleskey and Bivens) then lied about it (like Valleskey and Bivens). Werning blew up when I quoted him from my Day-Timer. 

As a future seminarian, I thought the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago would be a loser, based on their horrible location, Soviet architecture, and forced Left-wing sem merger.

Now the whole bunch named in the headline are sinking into the Slough of Despond. I inserted a few graphics to remind everyone of their folly.