Five Candidates Down to Two-Man Race for LC-MS President
An analysis of the five nominees' prospects to be LC-MS president
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

We can't make any projections based on what God may do tomorrow, so we base our projections on the information available on April 24, 2001.

The LCMS has five candidates for the office of president of the Synod. In alphabetical order they are: Raymond L. Hartwig, Secretary of the Synod; Gerald B. Kieschnick, Texas District President and Chairman of the Commission of Church Relations and Theology; Donald K. Muchow, Chairman of the LC-MS Board of Directors who holds the title of Admiral as a U. S. Navy Chaplain; Daniel Preus, Executive Director of the Concordia Historical Society; and Dean O. Wenthe, President of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne.

There may be five candidates, but based on current information and by process of elimination, there are only two front-runners: Muchow and Preus. The untimely death of President Barry will not be sufficient reason to elect a viable nominee from the 2001 Convention floor. It is reported that Barry had more nominations than the combined total nominations of the other five candidates. Therefore, these five are the spontaneous "second" choices of the Synod when it was clear none of them would win. Under these unprecedented and unprejudiced circumstances, a nominee from the floor will be seen as forced and opportunistic.

We now review each candidate's prospects.

Hartwig

It may be that LC-MS Secretary Dr. Hartwig made it on the list only after former Pacific District President and "Jesus First" nominee Loren Kramer, and Concordia Irvine President Jacob Preus withdrew their names. The number of ballots has not been published, but Hartwig may have less than 50 nominations. He will most likely be removed from consideration after the first ballot at the Convention.

Prior to Barry's death, Don Muchow told this writer on December 31 in Pasadena, California, that he was embarrassed by the "Jesus First" nomination and planned to remain as Chairman of the LC-MS Board of Directors. "Jesus First" began promoting Kieschnick as its first choice for LC-MS President. However, after Barry's death, according to one poll Muchow is clearly the favorite over Kieschnick. Even though Kieschnick has more nominations due to Muchow's earlier declination, after Barry's death Muchow is by far the preferred candidate among liberal and moderate clergy.

Kieschnick

Kieschnick must also be held accountable for the recent financial collapse of the Church Growth Movement in Texas. He was and remains one of the leading advocates of Doctor Norbert Oesch's Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI) recently rejected by the LC-MS Board For Higher Education for Recognized Service Organization Status.

Oesch's goal is to retrain 225 LC-MS clergy, at a cost of 1.2 million dollar per year, in Church Growth and Leadership Training techniques. Kieschnick is listed as the PLI "Liaison to the Council of Presidents." Oesch reported on February 6, 1998, that the Lutheran Church Extension Fund (LCEF) "asked four of us" what the Synod needed. Our answer to the LCEF answer was leadership training. Oesch also reported that he was encouraged by Concordia Seminary President, Dr. John Johnson, with Dr. Bill Meyer (Executive Director) of the Board for Higher Education, and with President, Gerry Kieschnick of the Texas District, to start PLI.

Seven pastors sent Oesch a call to be Executive Leader of PLI, including Dr. William Thompson of Concordia San Antonio. Thompson announced his resignation from Concordia and the LC-MS clergy roster on Sunday, April 22, 2001 due to physical, mental, and spiritual exhaustion. This writer published a series of articles on the LC-MS Church Growth Movement in Texas in February of 1999. Concordia San Antonio received the largest LCEF loan, 14 million dollars, ever given to a congregation. Thompson led Concordia to spend 21 million dollars for 5 buildings on 47 acres, without building a church, including a 200 foot, 2 story, 50 foot wide administration building. Oesch regularly holds his PLI pastoral training meetings at this location.

The result of Thompson's "entrepreneurial" leadership has led Concordia to decline from 2800 to 2200 in attendance per week, the release of a third of their 90 plus staff members, consistent failures in expensive fund raising programs, (92,000 dollars for the most recent) and inability to repay anything but the interest on their massive debt.

While speaking at San Antonio in February of 1999, this writer was challenged by First Vice President Lindermann because I quoted the decline in giving from Texas to the Synod as published in the Lutheran Annual. Additional LCEF "mega-church" loans are also in deep trouble in Texas. Kieschnick's risky schemes have raised serious questions about his financial, administrative, and theological judgment. The Texas District's adventures in Church Growth are costing their lay people millions of dollars. Kieschnick, who received approximately 43 votes to be LC-MS president in 1998, has virtually no chance of being elected LC-MS President or First Vice President.

Wenthe

At the Lutheran Concerns Association (LCA) and Association of Confessional Lutherans (ACL) meeting in Chicago, April 18-21, 2001, President Dean Wenthe of Fort Wayne was the name promoted by "Balance" members, publishers of Affirm, in nearly every hallway conversation. At the LCA meeting Mr. Hinnefeld and many others insisted that Wenthe was the right choice. When this writer moved the endorsement of the LCA for Rev. Daniel Preus and the motion was seconded, a member of Balance (Tom Baker was in the room) moved to table my motion. Another member of Balance from the panel discussion at the front spoke in support of tabling the motion. My motion was soundly def eated. After the LCA meeting Balance retreated for another of their closed-door secret strategy meetings, obviously to preserve the "machine candidate."

Balance is the organization that would not support resolutions for the name "Lutheran" in 1995 and the confession of only three Creeds in 1998, and will not support a resolution affirming Congregational Voters' Assemblies in 2001. It took them nearly two and a half years after the publication of "Reclaiming the Gospel in the LC-MS" in 1998 to see the threat PLI presented to LC-MS seminary education.

Fort Wayne has difficulty explaining why so many of its graduates and faculty refuse to support Voters Assemblies as the only polity of LC-MS congregations. At the 2001 Symposium meeting, at the request of Dr. David Scaer, approximately 300 of the some 800 in attendance stood up when asked how many Hyper-Euro-Lutherans were there. A Hyper-Euro-Lutheran is anyone who seeks a return to pre-Walther European Lutheran Hierarchy in LC-MS congregations. It is just an alternate term for Sacerdotalism, the pastor becoming the vehicle of God's grace as in the Catholic Church.

At the ACL banquet on Friday evening Rev. Eric Stefanski, moderator of the Table Talk website, was the guest speaker brought in to label this writer as a "schismatic" for insisting that LC-MS Congregations be governed by supreme Voter's Assemblies. Stefanski said Walther's 1848 speech gave churches the right to choose the polity of their choice. What he failed to tell his listeners was that Walther was talking about congregations outside of the Synod. Many of Wenthe's graduates and faculty refuse to support voter polity as the only polity of the LC-MS. Walther's speech can be viewed on www.reclaimingwalther.org

Walther taught that all LC-MS congregations be governed by supreme Voters' Assemblies in his "The Right Form of the Christian Congregation Independent of the State," and his "Pastoral Theology" available from Christian News. This writer's support for Voters' Assemblies was the subject of ridicule from most of the ACL speakers in 2000, and the 2000 and 2001 Fort Wayne Symposium banquets.

At end of the conference, after Professor Marquart delivered one of the most outstanding lectures on the doctrine of justification in this writer's memory, the floor was open to questions. Marquart gave an off the cuff response that silenced the room and effectively, though perhaps unintentionally, eliminated Wenthe from any realistic chance of being elected LC-MS President.

The question came from Dr. Burnell Eckardt, who wrote in his Easter 2001 edition of "Gottesdienst" in response to a question about bowing to the consecrated elements in the Lord's Supper after the service as follows: "Yes, we reserve the reliquiae, in order to bring them to shut-ins and, yes, I genuflect before them whenever appropriate, including when I prepare them at the home of the shut-in. We do not yet have a tabernacle here, but I see no theological impediment to having one." (page 18)

Eckardt asked Marquart if there was any sacerdotalism taking place in the Synod. Marquart replied, he didn't know where it was coming from, but it was at Fort Wayne. Marquart then explained that some students in class were defending sacerdotal theology such as the sacrament of ordination which has no grace from God, asking whether lay people should read the Bible without direction from the church, whether they can absolve each other, whether lay baptism was valid unless ratified by the church, and whether the pastor is necessary for the validity of the sacrament. Wenthe will have great difficulty overcoming this observation from the Synod's most astute theologian. A District President informed this writer that not one District President would support Wenthe.

Preus

Reverend Daniel Preus has announced that if he is elected to the LC-MS presidency one of the main concerns that must be addressed is "church and ministry." Preus has more nominations than any "conservative" candidate.

Muchow

Doctor Donald Muchow was the keynote speaker at the 1999 Fall Leadership Conference sponsored by The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Foundation and the Church Extension Fund on Nov. 19-21, 1999, in San Diego, California, with 900 in attendance flown in for the event. He was quoted in the LC-MS Reporter as follows: "Muchow warned against letting floating debris scuttle the church's 'voyage of rescue and love.' Debris, he said, includes 'controversies surrounding worship styles, hymnody, communion practices [and] congregational polity,' as well as 'increasing Biblical illiteracy, insufficient catechesis, and troublesome fellowship relationships with other faith groups. The audience interrupted Muchow with applause when he said, 'Nothing, not nothing, must take precedence over God's Great Commission for our journey.'"

Considering current events regarding Texas, PLI, and Fort Wayne, perhaps Muchow should reconsider Preus' suggestion that the church and ministry issues are more than "floating debris." Regardless of the number of nominations, Muchow, at this time, must by reason of experience and stature be considered the front-runner.


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

April 24, 2001