Guest Post: Connecting the Dots

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I just read your "Merge for Mission" article, a week after watching the WELS Connection for February 2025, which featured the WELS 100 in 10 initiative (https://wels100in10.net/). I told my wife at the time that it seemed odd to me that they would take young guys right out of the seminary to do these church plants. Why not look at guys who have already been in a parish for a few years and gotten some measure of experience under their belts on the day-to-day stuff, rather than throwing a raw seminary graduate into both trying to pick up that experience and simultaneously undertake the mission thing? Is it because they think inexperienced men will be more pliable with regard to perceived mission needs? Is it because they think there will be fewer consequences for men who don't yet have families -- or that such a perception will make family men proportionately less likely to take such calls unless they're already in trouble and looking for a different venue? If there is such a cynical element to the reasoning, thinking that a church-planting mission role could be unfavorable to family life, then it almost makes throwing the people who do get selected into such a fire seem that much worse. I'm just speculating, but there has to be a reason, because using the least-tested people otherwise seems counterintuitive.

I hadn't previously been familiar with the 100 in 10 program, but having already looked through some of your statistical posts from last summer/fall, my impression was that the Synod is looking to make a Jack Sparrow transition, letting the old ship sink underneath them but using it as a stepping-stone to a new perch. (Or at least I think that's what is going on in this scene; I've only ever seen a few clips from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.) The FAQ on the 100 in 10 web site seems to reinforce this:

"It is not a secret that WELS has been declining numerically in membership and in congregations. If we desire to have a Confessional Lutheran presence long after current generations are in heaven, starting more churches is imperative. Many of these declining churches are located near other WELS congregations that can continue to spiritually support members, freeing up resources to plant churches where there is no WELS presence." (https://wels100in10.net/faq/#toggle-id-3)

The FAQ wasn't real clear about the siting process. Despite the quote above (FAQ #3) stipulating these church plants occur in areas "where there is no WELS presence," the preceding item (FAQ #2) describes district mission boards ("boots on the ground") as "work[ing] with area congregations to identify locations to plant new churches throughout their district." So, on the one hand, it's okay to let old congregations die on the vine because there are others in the general area who can support their people, but on the other hand, the success of the new church plants is reliant on already having other congregations close enough to the area for valid specific insights regarding it.

Moreover, there's the issue of specialization of labor. Notwithstanding who they might want to attract -- for various reasons -- unless they change something fundamental about themselves, a group of historically German-American Lutherans from the Midwest is probably going to have a gentler ramp in terms of accessibility to those with whom they share some ethnic, cultural, religious, and/or geographical background, than those with significantly fewer points of similarity. So, are they going to be looking in the places and with the people that have common attributes, or are they going to distance themselves from the particularities God gave them -- and, indeed, perhaps from some of their own sheep who have been lost to them -- in order to focus on areas that seem like great opportunities, but might require far more effort per convert?

Today, while going back to older posts prior to my discovery of your site, I found that you've written about 100 in 10 before, including a couple excerpts that really cut to the chase.

"Less Churches, More Ministry" (August 15, 2023): "[W]e are in a midst of the WELS 100 in 10 initiative to plant 100 new congregations in 10 years. Read between the lines: close 300 existing (traditional) parishes and 'plant' 100 new (likely, less than traditional) parishes."

"Ministry" (November 5, 2023): "[Since] we have plans to shut down and consolidate older congregations - the net result will not be 100 more churches in the synod in 10 years, just 100 'different' churches."

On the topic of consolidation, generally, Bill Kauffman had an excellent chapter on school consolidation in his 1998 book, With Good Intentions?: Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America. This is a hard-to-find book, but one I highly recommend. (Review 1, Review 2)

There are two things that bother me about the consolidation of churches, in particular:

1. Notwithstanding what WELS pastors will say its doctrine of church means, in terms of the Synod being able to prevent aberrations, my experience has been that nothing makes WELS leadership (at least at the circuit and district levels) recoil into a caricature of the LCMS position like trying to tell them something is wrong in a congregation.

And that's stuff that can't be passed off as adiaphora. Get down to the level of, say, differences in worship, and there are congregations that you wouldn't know had anything in common with Martin Luther if it weren't for the label. People of traditional views should be shrewd enough to realize that they need all the local options they can get as insurance against their current congregation being the next domino to fall. We all know that the outcome of any consolidation is for even those pre-existing parishes which remain to undergo a kind of great leveling which means more contemporary services and practices, with fewer workarounds to avoid them.

2. There seems to be the assumption that we'll always be able to travel further than our pre-automobile ancestors to get to church every week. What if this were no longer the case -- for any one of a number of reasons, dystopian or otherwise? Even now, I mourn the fact that living some distance away from church limits our ability to interact as frequently as I'd like, either in terms of participation in early mornings or late evenings, or in terms of being able to build relationships with other members on a community level. I'm old enough to remember neighborhood grocery stores. There is a big change in thought process going from a place within the community that you could visit as often as you wanted -- and likely building regular relationships within the community while doing so -- to instead having it be a distant location at the edge of town or out by the freeway that requires a planned visit, but not something you'd do more than once per week and certainly not as part of your daily life -- and rarely ever seeing the same person twice, apart from the staff. It's not that I think having churches follow the same path will yield quite the same stark results, especially for those with school-age children who will hopefully have a further daily bond through the school, but it will move in that direction, and not everyone has kids in school.