an. 6, 2009
Insider Exposes LCMS Ablaze! Funds Bureaucracy
More than 10 years ago Reclaim News explained that the LCMS Church Growth Movement/PLI at Concordia, San Antonia, Texas, promoted by District President Gerald Kieschnick, was blatant mission fraud. The first chapter of the book Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS, sold by CN, sent to every 1998 LCMS Convention delegate, explained the scam.
But level headed LCMS clergy know that nothing good can come from Christian News. No LCMS Lutheran with a pillowcase over his head is going to listen to strident, shrill voices claiming that the LCMS hasnt got the brains to know when its being ripped off.
In 1998 Kieschnick received 47 votes to be Synodical President. Who would have thought that he would have a majority of the delegates in just three years? This writer did. No, we had no idea Barry was going to die. However, this writer knew that 75% of the COP political machine was desperate for Kieschnicks for victory.
By the 2004 Convention Kieschnick organized the Ablaze! movement as the greatest mission effort in LCMS history, with a goal of raising more than 100 million dollar to SAVE SOULS. Just by coincidence, it is the same word coined for missions by now deceased Texas revivalist, Leonard Ravenwood.
Now J. R. Wheeler, Pastor, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Osceola, Iowa, has published the following article about an insider who discovered, wonder of wonders, that Ablaze! is really funding the same old bureaucrats. (Also check out: www.issuesetc.org)
You may be interested in a fascinating analysis of the Ablaze! program from an LCMS mission executive. The Rev. David Vaughan served as director of Ablaze! Connection and is currently ABD in Public Policy at Saint Louis University. It looks like he came into the ministry through some alternate route certification at Concordia Seminary in 2007 after retiring from Anheuser-Busch, where he was director of the College of Sales and Marketing. Hes on the board of Family Shield Ministries.
He wrote up a policy analysis of the program for Missio Apostolica, a journal published in May and November for members of the Lutheran Society for Missiology. The journal is intentionally devoted to first-hand reporting from mission fields and discussion of studies and research in the same. This story, which I dont believe is available on-line (yet) is from the November 2008 issue (Vol. XVI, no. 2, (Issue 32)). So run down to your nearest theological library to have at it.
The article itself runs over a dozen pages and critiques the failures of the Ablaze! movement. I cant say I agree with many of his ideas for how to fix the program, but I appreciate his experience as a self-described insider even as he writes from the perspective of a policy analyst.
He basically says that if Ablaze! is as LC-MS leadership has said all about evangelism, a movement as opposed to a program, requires changing the way the LC-MS in general, and LC-MS World Mission in particular, approach their work, and intended to grow the sustainable capacity of the LC-MS in general . . . to do evangelism for the long term then its not succeeding. And then he gives ideas for how to improve the, um, movement.
He says the LCMS as a bureaucracy has provided more than a few obstacles to achieving these goals. He notes the lack of leadership in making Ablaze! a movement rather than a program. Heres what he says about the last goal:
Contrary to traditional thinking in the church, sustainable capacity building is not more people, more dollars, more buildings, and more programs in for-profit or public sectors. . . . using Fan into Flame donation dollars to fund existing district staff is not capacity building but rather an attempt to protect the institution.
As I said, his solution to the over-bureaucratization of LCMS, Inc. can be read as a recommendation to follow simply a different change-management model.
Still, the failures in the bureaucracy at LCMS, Inc. are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
What a shock! Ablaze! may really be nothing more than a fundraiser to support the cronies who put Kieschnick in office and keep him there.
The greatest mission outreach in LCMS history has thus far resulted in the most sustained losses in LCMS history. The LCMS has lost more than 25,000 members every year that Kieschnick has been in office.
If this had happened during the Barry administration, (abhorred by the COP) the libbys would have hollowed about those loveless, soul hating conservatives. Oh, the Gospel, the Gospel, they dont care about the Gospel. But when the COPs hero loses 200,000 plus members, it means we need to spend more money on Ablaze! and rewrite the LCMS Constitution, because its all that legalistic LCMS founder, C. F. W. Walthers fault.
Just like Wall Street, a Synod and its money can soon be parted. So far the only person who has gone to jail is Martha Stewart. If the Convention cant understand the Bible, how is it going to understand a checkbook or a balance sheet?
Will there be a change of administration in 2010? No!
There is no getting back what you know longer own. Perhaps 10 more years from now a small number of Lutherans in the LCMS will decided they will need to make another plan for themselves, like the 200 churches, (less than 1%) that left when the ALC, LCA, and AELC formed the ELCA. Im sure many will be satisfied waiting it out.
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I've about had it with 'Creative Liturgy' and the Ablaze programme.
