looking ahead to 2025

 

For just over three years now (minus a summer off in 2023) I've been blogging twice a week, a quick hitter on Wednesdays and a more substantial post on Sunday. This has worked well; in fact I have at least a years' backlog of skeleton posts in draft that could be fleshed out.  My original intention with blogging was to dabble in writing and engage the creative side of my brain that often goes dormant, and I consider that a success. I'm going to tweak things in 2025. Many of my posts are "observe and report" with the occasional original content and going forward I'd like to stretch my brain by doing more long form original content, which takes time. What I'm thinking is a quick hitter each Wednesday and two Sunday posts a month, one along the lines of what you've come to expect and another hopefully longer form, creative post. Of course, if something "Woke in the WELS" caliber comes to my attention, it'll take pride of place and weekly posting will resume.

I have a few long-form posts currently identified, including

• An Updated Theology of the Cross, as proposed by the WELS CRT pastoral brief, footnote 83
• Chemnitz Nationalism
• The confusion of heaven prior to the resurrection and the new heavens/new earth.
• An alternate CRT statement leveraging existing Christian statements on CRT (Not you, COP!)
• (and a Woke in the WELS treat especial for Proper 18)

I should note, I didn't create this blog with the "Woke in the WELS" content in mind; the content found me and the alliteration was too good to pass up. But the hope in airing out our dirty laundry is twofold: first, to affect change (and you should know, dear reader, there are things that I have had the joy of not reporting because, behind the scene, concerned individuals were able to interpose) and second, to leave a trail of receipts for the "next time" something happens. Many of my leads have come from anonymous sources. To the dozens of pastors, teachers and laymen who have emailed the blog with content and encouragement, I thank you.

And dozens are more than enough in a synod experiencing demographic decline, one where more than half of students in WELS schools and ECMs are not WELS. There is no substitute for a tightly organized minority, particularly when that organized minority wields the full counsel of God in its radiant purity against a bureaucracy wielding the lesser weapons of a narrow view of Gospel with an admixture of CRT, SEL, antiracism and pronouns. Where two or three come together...

Thanks, frens. God bless your new year!