Monday, May 5, 2008
2000 Missions
President Kieschnick says that he wants to have 2000 new Ablaze missions started by the year 2017. Let's think about this for a moment. A new mission can cost as much as $3-4m from district and synod to get started. Now not all missions cost that much, but some do. (In fact a few conservative missions don't even ask for any money from district or synod.) Ablaze missions are missions following the church growth or Fullerite model. This emphasizes the role of advertising and marketing in getting the new mission started. Billboards signed by Satan and such cost money. They also are contemporary worship congregations so you have to hire a praise band. That costs more than just having an organist or pianist. So the Ablaze missions will tend to cost more to start than the typical conservative, traditional, liturgical mission. An aside here that must be mentioned as well, is that none of the cross cultural Ablaze missions are ever expected to be self sustaining. So they will require ongoing funding. So lets add up some numbers here. Let's say on average that it takes $2m to get one of these Ablaze missions off the ground. To start 2000 of them would require $400m. Plus, some of these missions will require ongoing funding. This is starting to sound like a program cooked up in the U. S. congress.
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4 comments:
After reading that a Lutheran missionary is being dismissed from Africa, why would I ever believe that ABLAZE!is going to produce all these mission starts? Such actions would lead one to believe that we can't afford the missionaries we have. If we have all these ABLAZE bucks, how about re-instating and increasing our foreign missionaries?
That's the point. We don't have the money. In order to do this President Kieschnick will have plunge the synod into massive debt and sell everything that isn't tied down. Don't be shocked if suddenly you hear a proposal that says it would be cheaper to send our sem students to Fuller and close our sems, and sell the property.
The question is - at what point will Prez Kieschnick cause large numbers of the faithful to leave the Missouri Synod? I'm shocked that so many in the LCMS have tolerated Prez Jerry's actions.
The faithful, if previous history holds, will stay and fight the battles until it is clear that they cannot possibly win. Remember that conservatives have won difficult battles before.
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