LAWRENCE OTTO OLSON (LARRY OH!)

AND FULLER SEMINARY

 

"I did attend a Pasadena forum on Church Growth featuring Win Arn and others." Rev. Norman W. Berg, former DP and Home Mission Executive, WELS Letter to Gregory L. Jackson, 3-27-96. "Incidentally, during my mission counselor days in California during the 80's, I did take a course at Fuller from Carl George and Peter Wagner." Rev. Joel C. Gerlach (WELS) to Pastor Herman Otten, no date. [Gerlach taught at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary] "To the best of my knowledge, only three WELS pastors have ever taken classes at Fuller Seminary:  Reuel Schulz in the 1970s, and Robert Koester and I in the 1980s."

Prof. Lawrence Otto. Olson,  "A Response to Gregory L. Jackson, Ph.D.," Christian News, 3-28-94, p. 23.

 

"The church growth movement has made inroads into nearly every denomination in America…The LCMS has more pastors enrolled in the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary, the seedbed of the movement, than are enrolled in the graduate programs at their Fort Wayne and St. Louis seminaries combined, and most of them include church growth as part of their studies."

Prof. Lawrence Otto Olson, (D. Min., Fuller), "See How It Grows: Perspectives on Growth and the Church," EVANGELISM, February, 1991,  p. 1.

 

"Then there is the church growth movement, which has made more devastating headway in LCMS than in ELCA (although it is evident enough in the latter).  Today, it is said, Missouri has three seminaries-- St. Louis, Ft. Wayne, and Fuller Seminary in California, the hothouse of church growth enthusiasms.  The synodical and district mission offices are frequently controlled by church growth technocrats...But the idea that Word and Sacrament ministry is somehow validated by calculable results is utterly alien to the Lutheran Reformation...The triumph of style over substance, however, is all too evident in LCMS congregations that look like Baptists with vestments.  As we have noted before, second-rate Lutherans make fourth-rate Baptists."

Rev. Richard Neuhaus, (ELCA at the time), Forum Letter, November 26, 1989, p. 2.