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| Natural consequences. |
The recent financial debacle in WELS reminds me of natural consequences. The WELS leaders made a conscious decision to let an unprincipled person run an official event. No controls were in place, in spite of that individual's court history of creating similar events and keeping the money. A WELS pastor's daughter? - that explains everything.
An enormous amount of money comes in for an expo. Luther Days raised at least $10,000 from LACE and other official entities. The sponsors did not get the "largest distinctively Lutheran conference in North America" and the speakers did not get paid their expenses.
They had more speakers than parking places for them. Jay Webber is Facebook friends with Natalie Pratt. Maybe he and his son got paid back.
When Pratt tried to take over the Return to Wittenberg conference, she wanted the registration money before the location was confirmed. She met with SP: Mark Schroeder and got her own expo and funds, linked on WELS.net with the synod's obvious official approval. RTW did not get any mention at all - or approval - or funds.
Better to be a slave in the house of the Lord than a princess in Babylon.
Who benefited? WELS did. Kudu Don Patterson bullied Natalie into erasing her blog called Shattered Pulpit. Someone got her to erase WELS Documented as well. WELS Pastor Steve Spencer had Natalie contact me under a fake name to promote her causes. WELS is always playing spy games - badly - to get things done under the radar. But everyone knows eventually.
The son of one WELS pastor wrote constantly to leak Ski/Glende information to me. The same information was going to Steve Spencer. Nothing came of the facts posted on this blog, except very high page views those months. One day the son denied some information I knew via Spencer. Another day the son said, "My dad is standing next to me as I write."
The pose of deniability is hilarious in WELS and other places. The Intrepid Lutherans, who fought without discipline and ran without shame, made sure they sanitized themselves against the charge they were in cahoots with me - the ad ichabodem fallacy. I gave them some background links and they ran with it. But they were accused anyway.
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| Rydecki and Spencer - at the first and last Intrepid conference. |
I suggested a group blog for the Intrepid Lutherans, and they did a good job of discussing topics. But I wonder if Spencer - who picked the name Intrepid Lutherans - was just gathering a list of volunteers for the gallows. (Reference to the Hungarian Revolution, 1956)
Church and Change was - and still is - a stealth operation. Once the Steadfast Lutherans had a conference, like Issues in WELS, they were forcibly disbanded. Mission accomplished - thanks to Steve Spencer - who bailed out first, unintrepidly, and apologized several times for offending any of the false teachers in WELS.
To be fair, the original idea came from SP Mark Schroeder, who suggested to Steve Spencer that they needed a group to organize against Church and Change.
Spencer was the one who gave me the first links to Church and Change, its website, and various facts.
The LCMS is not any different in its leadership and tactics. Their strength is their loose federation of lobbies, charities, entities, and factions. One can always find a refuge in the LCMS rainbow coalition.
Publishing the truth about the scandalous leaders of WELS-LCMS-ELS has accomplished very little, because the bureaucracy specializes in protecting itself.
However, the main goal of this blog is to promote Luther's Biblical doctrine and Reformation theology. That has gone well, with more pastors and laity taking a great interest in knowing and practicing what the Reformer taught.
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| WELS, LCMS, ELS, and CLC practice this fallacy with great cunning and tenacity. |