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The following remarks were made on March 3, 2000 by Rev.
Mark Jeske, vice-president of WELS' Southeastern Wisconsin District:
Change in the WELS as we go Forward Together in Christ
Thank you for the honor of inviting me to speak to you this
morning. I
have said in other contexts, and now repeat before witnesses, that our WELS
education system, especially our Lutheran elementary schools, are the WELS'
crown jewels. It is what we do best as an organization. We have not
been
national religious leaders in scholarship, music publication, evangelism, lay
ministry, or foreign missions, although we are learning and growing in all
these areas. But we do schools well.
Your program chair asked me to give my opinions on what
needs changing in
the WELS. Well. That is an absolutely irresistible challenge.
My ministry
is half over, so I've been around long enough to know what I'm talking about.
And yet I'm not ready for the glue factory quite yet, so I can still work
on
implementing some of the things in this
paper.
It would be absolutely irresponsible to launch into a
discussion of
things that need changing without first celebrating and praising God for what
he has enabled us to do right. So with apologies to David Letternman,
here
is my top ten list of things I hope will never change in the Synod:
(He goes on to list:
1. Sola Scriptura principle
2. Centrality of justification.
3. Means of Grace
4. Thorough training for called workers.
5. Christian education system
6. Fellowship throughout the synod, unity of spirit
7. Strong passion for missions
8. Rising tide of lay ministries gives me great joy.
9. Servant mentality and humility of WELS leaders
10. Growing tolerance for diversity in style.
"That old-boy network enforcing stiff traditions is
losing its power to
stifle innovation and risk."
He continues:
Here are the top ten areas of our ministries in which I would like to see
change.
1. Myself. I trust God too little....
2. We don't prize our synod and our ministry relationships enough....Our
called workers at 2929 will tell you that they take a lot more abuse than
encouragement.
3. We need to loosen up....Our public worship/praise/prayer style seems
stiff, overly formal, unemotional, smotheringly doctrinal. I personally
do
not think that our synod in general has a good balance of head & heart in
our
worship life. There. I said it.
4. Our schools are not being fully utilized to draw unchurched people
into
the fellowship.
5. We need to love cities more.
6. We need to welcome diversity, prize new racial groups and the cultural
and ministry treasures that they bring. New people groups coming in to
the
WELS will not pollute our "pure" (quotation marks in the original)
Lutehran
practices. but enrich them.
7. We need a little more sanity and calm in our discussions of church
fellowshp. Things I can't stand:
* Assigning a seminary professor a paper and then letting all
applications
and conclusions become canon law instead of each of us getting into Word
[sic] personally.
* passing off crude oversimplification as WELS canon law, such as,
"You
can't pray with anybody who is not WELS," or "if anyone rejects a
clear word
of God, he is in rebellion agaisnt the most High God and you can't be sure
that he/she is really saved.
* We have a very highly developed sense of what we can't do with other
Christians, to the point taht it is safer to have nothing to do with other
Christians. We lack the positive side of dealing with other Christians in
practical ways.
8. I think we need a little more sanity in dealing with men/women role
issues in the church....sometimes the WELS position is described as asserting
male headship in all relationships: in family, church and society.
Scripture speaks only of the first two areas, and so should we.
9. We need to declare a moratorium on negative comments about public
schools. It is possible to be proud of our WELS system without running
down
M[ilwaukee] P[ublic] S[chools]. There are many wonderful educational
programs and innovations happening in MPS that we would do well to study and
learn from.
10. There is a price that we have paid for our unity of practice in the
WELS, and that is we have only each other as ministry models. We have
many
weak areas of ministry, such as in cities, and need to get around more to
learn from other successful ministries even if they're not WELS. It is
not
helpful if our attempts to learn from other Christians is ridiculed as
"sitting at the feet of the Reformed" or "capitulating to the
papacy."