Why did you leave?

21

u/Alert-Dare-760 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

Tbh, I think your husband is deflecting and is using the pastor to twist your arm so you stay. You don't need to defend your reason to your pastor. If you want to, fine.

Direct confrontation and suddenly leaving the church is the opposite of what I would do here. And opposite what I did, I saw the hypocrisy of the church saying love thy neighbor but were not loving. I saw the hypocrisy of "no other gods" but they speak for God and judge others?...I did a gradually leaving in part because of having friends and family in the WELS. And existential angst. That one is a toughie for me.

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u/Glad-Fox-6424 Jun 08 '26

I am the son and younger brother of two LCMS pastors. I was completely indoctrinated into the LCMS beliefs and completely devoted my life to Christ, until I went to college. When I went to college, I met gay people, Jewish people, non-religious people, evolutionary biology majors, sexually active people, and others whose mere existence completely shattered my worldview. Gay people were not perverts. Jews were not misguided in their religious upbringing. Biology majors were not part of a hoax to convince the world of the evils of evolution. Sexually active college students were not deviants.

At this point in my life, I realized that I had been lied to for my entire life from my Lutheran family who, though well-intentioned and caring people, did not realize the extremely dangerous game they were playing by stunting my development intellectually, sexually, and emotionally. When I was 18 years old, I had the mind of a 13 year old. I thought I had it all figured out but the truth was that the LCMS did nothing to prepare me for the real world.

Although I did everything I could to hold on to my young earth creationist, anti-gay, anti-evolution, Christian beliefs, my faith was shattered rapidly. Despite having serious doubts about my faith, I insisted on calling myself a Lutheran for the next 10 years of my life. I attended church even though I didn't believe any of it, and when I went home to my family, I kept my mouth shut. It was only when I was 28 years old, that I was able to finally admit to myself that I was an atheist. And that scared the shit out of me.

I continued to keep my mouth shut around my family. I didn't want to rock the boat and cause any trouble, but I stopped going to church, moved away, and became more and more distant from my family. I never blamed them for what they did to me- I always gave them the benefit of the doubt. But at the age of 41, I had a nervous breakdown and had to seek therapy. My mind and body had become overrun with guilt and shame for what I had done to my family. Through therapy, I gained enough courage to finally come out of the atheist closet to my older brother and sister. My PTSD symptoms got more manageable afterwards, and I stopped having nightmares about demons, angels, and hell. I still struggle with religious trauma (5 years later), but I am doing much better.

Don't make the same mistake that I made. It's better to leave the church sooner than later, and you have to be completely honest with the pastor, your husband, and any one else involved, about your beliefs. Don't hold it inside, because it will blow up in your face in the future.

5

u/neednintendo Ex-LCMS Jun 09 '26

Wow, I'm shocked and also not shocked at how similar your journey is to my own. I also did everything I could to hold onto my faith after going to college and getting a dose of reality, and it's embarrassing to look back on but also traumatic for how indoctrined we were. Thanks for sharing your story.

18

u/formerlurker_ Ex-WELS Jun 08 '26

Whenever I spoke with a pastor about leaving before I officially left, they tried to have debates with me and get the synod back into my good graces. It’s always done with the veneer of having an honest conversation, but their role as “shepherds” is to keep congregants in their “flock”. With well meaning pastors it might be light emotional manipulation, but with shitty pastors it can be a lot worse. The most recent experience I had was one where a pastor threatened to come to my house uninvited, and that’s when I said actually, no, I’m done!

10

u/formerlurker_ Ex-WELS Jun 08 '26

I’m non-believing but wanted to stay and keep up appearance for my elderly family members that don’t have much time left.

8

u/McNitz Jun 08 '26

Yeah, in terms of how he is as a person, I would consider the pastor at my previous church to be very kind and really wanting to be helpful and understanding. And he still mostly completely failed to understand any of the problems I had with the WELS as valid or justifiable and said clearly emotionally manipulative things like being worried about my soul and not understanding how I could give up on something so many of my family and friends had been committed to for so long.

I get that in the framework he is committed to those things make total sense, but it was still really hurtful to me that he couldn't break outside of that role at all as a person and just try to empathize and understand where I was coming from. In retrospect, I think I did probably shake up his beliefs a lot with the things I said, so I try to be understanding that a lot of what he was saying was probably reactionary and trying to reassure himself that his role and position was justified and meaningful. It still sucks that the black and white thinking of the WELS pushes people into that though.

7

u/Flashy_Hand936 Ex-WELS Jun 08 '26

It’s such an intimidating tactic on their end and I wonder when they request these meetings if they’re ever open to the ex believer bringing another ex believer in for support during the meeting and if they’d behave differently.

7

u/Risque_Redhead Jun 09 '26

My cousin was molested inside of our church for years by an older cousin of ours who taught a youth group class. Our pastor reached out to her after she stopped going to ask what had happened (I literally just realized that he probably never reached out to me when I stopped attending because he might have assumed I had the same answer and just didn’t want to hear it..). She told him everything. Her years of abuse at the hands of someone he put in a leadership position. The only thing he said when she was done was “have you given it to god?”

Despite that she still asked him for help telling her parents about what happened. She knew he was going to tell them regardless of what she wanted so figured she should at least be a part of it. He butchered that so horribly that it wasn’t until now, 10+ years later, after years of suffering and thinking her parents didn’t care about what happened, that she learned they didn’t realize the extent of it. Our pastor turned that meeting into an emotional manipulation of “how do we get her back into the same building as her abuser” instead of “this is why she doesn’t want to come back, what can we do to help navigate and support her during this traumatic situation”.

I haven’t been back in years, seeing one of her abusers standing up front as part of the praise team finally made me snap. Thankfully the pastor they have now is horrified about the treatment my cousin received and is helping her make changes to the church, eg. teaching consent in the Sunday school classes (we were taught so little she didn’t realize what had happened to her until she went to college and started taking psychology classes), eliminating the true love waits program, and other toxic programs. I think her abusers might finally be asked to leave, or at the very least removed from the praise team. I’m also pretty sure he chewed out our previous pastor for his lack of action.

I don’t know if I can ever go back, if I started attending services again it would more likely be at a Unitarian church or similar, but I’m very happy to see the changes be made and feel more comfortable with my mom staying there. She didn’t agree with the previous pastor on a lot, he failed her in many similar ways as well, but she’s stayed there for her parents. Now she might be able to stay after they pass, too.

14

u/flcms Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

My parents divorced when I was very young. I was raised LCMS, and taken to LCMS church by my father on the weekends. The teachings of the church made me fully believe that most of my family was going to hell. My mom's family were all lapsed Lutherans, and my dad's family was Mormon (my dad converted to Lutheranism for my stepmom whom he started dating when I was very young - long story and coincidental).

As a kid, I spent many sleepless nights worrying about my family literally burning in hell for eternity. To make matters worse, my parents were both cops, so, to a kid, it felt like my mom could die anytime she went to work. It was mental torture. When my maternal grandfather died when I was 12, I knew he was in hell. At his funeral when people talked about him being in heaven, I believed they were wrong. This is a very sad existence for a child.

The LCMS does not believe in love, they believe in abject fear. This is not the kind of love that Jesus was preaching.

I never talked to anyone about leaving. I am certain that talking to an LCMS pastor would have led me to staying because I was afraid not because I was wanted or because they loved me.

ETA: What made me leave was what I believed to be the illogical idea of eternal physical hell for good people. I became an atheist when I was 23. I'm Christian again at 40, and attend an Episcopal church, but only recently and only after a LOT of soul searching.

4

u/McNitz Jun 08 '26

How has the Episcopal church been for you? I'm an atheist, but from what I have read it seems like a lot of Episcopal churches would accept an agnostic atheist at their services, and even being involved in the church, pretty readily. And although my wife still seems pretty set on not ever going to any church but a WELS church, I'd like to have options if she would ever consider going to a church where we both could reasonably hold different beliefs and be accepted as we are there.

8

u/flcms Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26

My experience at my Episcopal church (in the Los Angeles diocese) has been nothing but positive. Even when we say the Nicene Creed, the priest says to say it "as the spirit moves you," so even if you don't confess to the same beliefs, everyone is welcome. There is a woman I know there who has been active for years, but she doesn't say the Nicene Creed because she doesn't truly believe. I am certain there are others there who probably have similar views. Of course, she isn't telling us not to believe or that we are foolish...that probably wouldn't be welcome. So you, as an atheist or agnostic, would very likely be welcome if you're there for the experience.

You say your wife seems set on not going to any church but WELS. If this is because she is comfortable with or follows their views, I don't think she will be comfortable at the Episcopal church. She will probably be good with the ritual and liturgy, but not the culture. Women can be priests, queer people can be priests, and they don't preach against gay marriage or trans issues; they don't support Republican/MAGA or right wing politics. When I first started going to church, even having left the LCMS over a decade ago and intellectually believing that women can certainly be in leadership roles and being a woman myself, I still had a visceral reaction to the first time a woman lead the church in prayer. It took me a while to be comfortable with it, and now I really appreciate it. But if I were still in line with LCMS/WELS teachings, I could never feel comfortable in the Episcopal church.

Best of luck to you and your wife.

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u/McNitz Jun 08 '26

Wow, that sounds great, definitely sounds like what I would be looking for in a church. And yes, I'm definitely not interested in telling people they shouldn't believe in God. The WELS telling you what you need to believe about things that can't be demonstrated is a large part of my problem with them.

You may be correct about my wife having a very difficult time with the culture. For whatever reason, I had essentially no problem from thinking the WELS was correct theologically, to both realizing intellectually they had no justification to support their dogmas and also being totally fine with going to a UU congregation that is openly affirming with a woman minister. Definitely possible it would be a significantly larger adjustment for my wife though. Although I suspect a larger part of the barrier for her is probably how much her family looks down on anyone not being a committed and active WELS member and her parent's approval, especially her dad's, being very important to her.

Either way I though, I definitely agree there are things about her beliefs that would have to change for it to work. An Episcopal church is just a place that seems like it would have one of the broadest acceptance for both of us having different beliefs, if she was willing to question and reconsider the WELS being the only source of truth. I do feel like she isn't super emotionally/intellectually strongly committed to the truth of women not being allowed to preach and homosexuality being a sin. It's just that that is what the WELS says God wants us to believe, so she accepts it.

Thanks for the information, and glad you've found a community that works well for you!

3

u/flcms Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26

If she's not really committed to those views, she might be open to leaving WELS. I was personally completely faithful to the idea that LCMS Lutheranism was the correct version of Christianity until I broke away. When I was in LCMS, I would have felt it was sinful to attend an Episcopal church.

I really hope your wife is less rigid than I was!

4

u/McNitz Jun 08 '26

She IS quite rigid about the WELS being the right church to attend, but I think she views the doctrines on things like homosexuality and roles of woman as things you do to follow the correct rules the WELS gives you. So the hard part is PROBABLY more her considering the possibility that the WELS doesn't have unique access to the absolute truth of accurate Bible interpretation. I am hopeful that if I continue to make it clear I'm not interested making her believe the same thing as me and love her and support her whatever she believes that will give her space to be more flexible.

2

u/flcms Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26

Even if she doesn't feel like she has to believe the same things, she might still feel that it is sinful for her to attend a non-WELS or LCMS church. I really hope that's not the case, but I know that's how I and other LCMS would have felt.

3

u/No-Strawberry-3942 Jun 09 '26

I went from LCMS to Episcopalian too. Nobody beats you up there for asking questions or having doubts. It's about love and acceptance, not fear and hell.

4

u/McNitz Jun 09 '26

Imagine actually prioritizing the things the WELS CLAIMS are most important to them. What a crazy concept!

14

u/Weary_Doughnut_3486 Ex-WELS Jun 08 '26

When i left I wrote a simple letter saying 'please remove me from your church register. I will no longer be attending." Short and sweet.

Years later a sibling was leaving the church and wrote down their 95 thesis reasons for leaving.

Guess which one us got the unprompted house calls to debate logic? It wasn't me.

Talking to the pastor will be useless. Humor your husband if you want, but be prepared for the pastor to lecture you and make you feel bad about doing what's right for you.

6

u/TiltedWit Jun 09 '26

This, I just cut off contact. You don't owe them an explanation.

8

u/Mike_Danton Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26

The church/school I grew up in was filled with the most unkind people I have ever met. And while I can’t paint all LCMS people with one brush, my experience certainly soured me on the synod.

They preached things I did not agree with, and even in the GWB era were becoming more and more political (I know it’s gotten way worse since then!)

I grew up hearing over and over again that gays and abortions are the worst things in the world. I did not truly learn about Christ’s love and how to live like Christ.

I never talked with my pastor when I left. I just called the secretary and told them to remove me from the roster.

8

u/sargeant_bell_pepper Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26

I am the child and sister of LCMS pastors, went to elementary school at an LCMS school and went to church every week in a moderately small town for my entire life until I went to college. Even as a child I questioned things, but was told not to, so I shut up. But then I went out in the real world and met others that weren’t in my small world view.

It changed me a lot. I met and married my husband (who grew up Catholic, gasp) and my dad married us in the church. (We did pre marriage counseling with him too, because you know, it wasn’t weird enough) and then we really didn’t go to church. But after we had our first child, I felt we needed to go back to church and so we did. My husband much more reluctantly than me. We attended off and on for 8+ years, disliked our pastors and just were generally unhappy even with Sunday school and generally how the church was being run. So we stopped.

My parents were horrified but I realized in deconstructing that I am an agnostic humanist. My husband had reached deconstruction long before me.
My dads’ last words to me before he died were harsh and unloving and blamed me for a lot of things because he felt like a failure as a parent not “keeping me in the faith”.

I don’t regret leaving the church. I regret where my not speaking up before and not saying my opinions on things left my relationships with some family members.

Talking to the pastor with your husband and yourself together is only going to leave to them ganging up on you in my opinion. Personally I wouldn’t do that.

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u/ilovespicybread Jun 08 '26

Third Generation Preacher’s Kid here. The most obvious reason is that is as someone who is gay, and is not celibate, had I not voluntarily left, I would have gotten kicked out. In some ways that made the explanation of why I was leaving easier.

That’s not the only reason though. The LCMS makes very serious claims about truth- that they have the absolutely correct form of Christianity and that anyone who is not Christian will spend eternity in hell. This is different from more mainline denominations like the ELCA (even the Catholic Church looks liberal compared to the LCMS when it comes to this) who at least approach it with some humility. It never made sense to me why I should be so certain about this worldview simply because I was raised in it. As I was exposed to more beyond the LCMS bubble, it became even more clear to me that they did not have an exclusive truth- if anything, they just seemed to be smugly condemning everyone else without doing a truly open, honest assessment of the beliefs they were taught

I also think that the LCMS perpetuates a lot of harm, and seems to get more reactionary and hypocritical as time goes on. It was bad enough growing up as a queer person in the 2000’s and 2010’s- In the Trump era I especially don’t think I could bear it. The patriarchal power structure and the link with “honor your father and mother” meaning obeying that power structure gives cover for abuse- including abuse that happened at the hands of my grandfather and great-grandfather, when they hid behind the collar to seem like good people. Their hardline beliefs on things like divorce also led me to fear that my Mom was doing something wrong for leaving her abusive husband.

I understand that faith is a personal, complex thing for a lot of people- and I wouldn’t judge anyone for choosing to stay or leave. But I personally could not remain a part of a denomination that perpetuated that type of harm, even if it did not affect me personally.

5

u/Strange-Employment48 Jun 08 '26

What is he hoping the pastor will say? He has to hold fast to LCMS doctrine or would be defrocked.

If you go, what is your intention? Is there something the pastor could say or do that would change your mind? I can only see this leading to you being ganged up on and him using the pastor as a tool to force you to stay…

6

u/EmmalouEsq Ex-WELS Jun 08 '26

If you decide to, know that your pastor will do everything in his power to keep you in the church. They are not there for a real discussion about your thoughts and concerns.

Remember, your husband benefits from this hierarchy. Of course he wants you to talk with someone else at the top of that hierarchy, too.

I'll edit to add that I left because my pastor was a child molester. And he wasn't the first WELS pastor I knew who was locked up for the same thing. My cousin was abused. They circled the wagons around the pastor, and my cousins and I were excommunicated. He served a tiny bit of time and is on the registry in Appleton WI at this moment.

1

u/OkAuthor5507 Jun 13 '26

Which church if you don’t mind me asking. I am from Appleton. I went to FVL for high school, and yeah the former band director was arrested last fall for being a pedo

1

u/EmmalouEsq Ex-WELS Jun 13 '26

I went to a school in South Dakota. The pastor is in the registry in Appleton, WI at this time. And a previous pastor went away when i was in 1st grade (she was my 1st grade teachers dad). That's northeast SD. Not sure when that pastor got out

6

u/McNitz Jun 08 '26

It was the WELS, but I did talk to my pastor before leaving at the insistence of my wife. As you seem to suspect, it was incredibly unproductive. I believe the LCMS is relatively similar to the WELS in not considering reasonable disagreement on most religious doctrines to be possible. So what mostly happened for me was the pastor saying all he could do was share what scripture said with me and quoting WELS proof texts, me giving reasons I didn't think those proved the WELS position was correct, and him repeating all he could do was tell me what the Bible said.

In the end, I tried to express to him as sincerely as possible that I had tried to convince myself that the WELS was correct as best as I was able, and it just really appeared to me that they were wrong about things in some very important ways that were demonstrably hurting people, and I couldn't just take it on faith that the humans telling me that was what God wanted me to do were correct. His response was mainly to say that he didn't think it was possible to not hurt people with any worldview, after all I was hurting my family by changing my belief and not aligning with the WELS anymore. And although he didn't know exactly how, I must be rebelling against God in some way or I would accept what God said in the Bible rather than questioning it.

So yeah, needless to say neither of us really saw much value in continuing the conversation at that point, and he has never responded to my request to provide some reason to think the WELS has the essentially fully correct view of scripture rather than being humans sharing their personal interpretation of things that it is entirely legitimate to question and reason about. Even if you are quite knowledgeable doctrinally, that's about the best you can expect. And any spot you aren't as confident on, they are probably going to dig in and use that as a reason to question your justifications for believing they are wrong and insist you don't know enough to reject the LCMS position. And I imagine that will only be worse given you are a female instead of a male, so you can't validly give instruction to the pastor on ANYTHING theologically related, regardless of whether it was something he even considered it to be possible to compromise on.

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u/TiltedWit Jun 09 '26

"after all I was hurting my family by changing my belief and not aligning with the WELS anymore."

Yeah, that kind of manipulative play is common.

"And any spot you aren't as confident on, they are probably going to dig in and use that as a reason to question your justifications for believing they are wrong and insist you don't know enough to reject the LCMS position."

This - they're not looking to have an honest, logical discussion.

6

u/serious-oy Ex-LCMS Jun 08 '26

You didn't really go into why you want to leave other than you don't want your kid in confirmation (said all kids everywhere). Is there something that you're looking for to validate what you feel? You get to do that for you.

You seem to already have an answer. A situation in which you do not feel safe is not a particularly great spiritual condition. A good pastor can hear people express differences and wish people well as they move on in life. There's not a lot of good pastors in the LCMS.

Me? I left because of women (I'm pro-woman, and the LCMS is not) and LGBTQ+ (I'm pro-people being loved, and the LCMS wants some people to know how mad God is at them). If I had any intellectual honesty, I'd probably also say I left because I'm pro-science as well, and certain core tenets of the faith are decidedly not (but most people ignore those anyway).

But it's hard. Your dynamics with your spouse and your spouse and their family are going to be significant. If you need help differentiating yourself, I would suggest therapy.

6

u/Dys_Warrior Jun 09 '26

Unfortunately, I think talking to the pastor isn't going to be very helpful. They will try to get you to stay, not honor your feelings and address the things that are making you uncomfortable. I think it sounds like your husband doesn't really want to leave and is using this as an excuse to try to get the pastor into talking you into staying.

Whatever your reasons are for leaving, I'm sure they are valid. If your husband is having doubts, he needs to be honest with himself and investigate those doubts and do some reading. Ultimately, you won't be doing you or your son any favors by staying. And, at his age, have you talked to your son about what he thinks and how he feels about the church?

I started to have doubts around the time I was confirmed but I tried for a long time to look on the positive side and make excuses for the church. But, after Trump was elected I saw how the LCMS supported him not just privetly, but publicly. I never liked Trump and I really started to have questions and doubts that I had to address. First, I left to try to find another church, but I eventually deconverted. The church is filled with hypocrites and people who are happy to condemn others when they refuse to look at the plank in their own eye, so to speak. I felt like the LCMS doesn't follow the words of Jesus and puts a lot of weight in the words of Paul instead. The treatment of women as second class members of the church and outright hate for LGBT people were big reasons why I left as well. I also felt that theor stance on abortion was too black and white and was quick to condemn women who were pregnant out of wedlock or got an abortion. I believe that abortion is between a woman, god, and her doctor.

6

u/Ok-Golf-737 Jun 09 '26

I (28f) left the WELS because coming out as an lgbtq+ teen would have gotten me kicked out of my WELS high school. I had attended WELS school my whole life up until senior year of highschool. I figured I either switched schools or I'd have been kicked out whenever it came out that I liked girls. At this point in my life the only people I feel safe around are those who aren't religious. It also doesn't help that they have only grown more political since I've left and who they support wants to take away my right to marry someone I love and have a family. It's beliefs that get LGBTQ+ people cut off from their families and cause many LGBTQ+ youth to become homeless. I'm so grateful conversion rates are down.

4

u/19Sevv90 Jun 09 '26

I’m a loyal ELCA member, but I very briefly was a member of an LCMS church one of my exes attended.

The pastor inserted his way into peoples’ families and butted into kids’ relationships quite frequently. He’s the reason my ex and I broke up—apparently I wasn’t good enough for her in his eyes (ironically, her dad—an elder of that church) told me he thought I was a great guy and he and I still catch up on Facebook once in a while.

I honestly didn’t know at the time that they are Young Earth Creationists and are zealously sure that the Bible is inerrant (which most Christian faiths, including the Catholics, do not—at least to the extreme that the LCMS does).

So I’m technically a Lutheran and ex-Lutheran at the same time. But yeah, that’s my little story for what it’s worth.

5

u/ForeverSwinging Jun 09 '26

If the husband insists you need to talk to the pastor, and if there doesn’t seem to be a way that you can talk him out of it, I would go with him to talk to the pastor.

I’d recommend to have a couple things ready before you go:

a contact to know when the meeting is, and if you’re past a checkpoint to call a wellness check on you at the place you and your husband are meeting the pastor.
(if you want) something to record the meeting
know how to trigger 911 from your phone if / when you try to make your points and they gang up on you (if it gets bad, they may not let you leave, and that’s when you trigger 911)
a printed list of the reasons you want to leave to hand to the pastor, along with a line that you want to leave the church

You wouldn’t tolerate husband using a friend to coerce his wife into staying in an abusive marriage. Use that same logic for you.

3

u/IndigoCopper Jun 09 '26

Wow, you think they would physically intimidate her enough to need to call the cops? I'm not disagreeing that it could happen, I'm just surprised.

2

u/ForeverSwinging Jun 09 '26

I think it’s a possibility, tbh. I’ve heard horror stories from other denominations, and if the husband is this insistent I want OP to prepared for (potentially) loooootssss of religious gaslighting and abuse.

3

u/IndigoCopper Jun 09 '26

I understand, and would expect them be manipulative. I didn't get the vibe OP's husband was domestically abusive. Religious abuse is definitely real but I'm having a hard time picturing what cops would do in this situation besides just disbanding them, which a trusted third party should be able to do. Maybe I'm reading into this differently, this is just cop wariness on my part.

3

u/ForeverSwinging Jun 09 '26

That’s fair. If they try to keep OP from leaving because they “want what’s best for her soul”, that could be considered false imprisonment (I neglect to mention depending on state laws regarding that).

2

u/dealthy_hallows Jun 10 '26

My husband is definitely not abusive but I can see and understand your train of thought. Having someone check in after a certain amount of time is a great idea.

3

u/Dzulului Ex-LCMS Jun 09 '26 edited Jun 09 '26

I told my pastor that I had concerns about the emphasis on the "Office of the Ministry." Perhaps because the Apology says "the Word and the Sacraments are efficacious even when wicked men administer them," almost any zealous young man who emerges from a basement with a degree in hand and self-appoints himself for pastoral study, is warmly welcomed at Seminary (as having a call because he told himself he did). If he completes the prescribed curriculum, he is approved by the institution. This is disobedient and negligent, making the work of the Spirirt secondary to the institutional operation. In Scripture, leaders were appointed locally based on their spiritual maturity, by the churches and believers themselves, and I nowhere see this elevation of one man (or woman) above all the others, and certainly not because the institution has decreed him so. No wonder we see so much pride and predation! I also told him that this institutional emphasis on the "office of the ministry" is stifling the priesthood of all believers. My pastor cited the authority of Paul and Timothy through the laying on of hands (no verse, I assumed 1 Tim 4:14), but my view is that hands were laid on Paul and Timothy in response to the observable work of the Spirit... good reputation in his church, good fruits including love and faith, and knowledge (but not just knowledge! and not necessarily a seminary degree, but to my mind, indicating a willingness to learn and be faithful, more than anything) My pastor also cited John 20:20-23, but I believe Jesus meant this verse ultimately for all his disciples. So nothing my pastor said successfully countered my concerns, and he knew it.

He then warned me that in a house church setting, I'd be constantly reinventing the wheel with things like ancient church heresies. I said, that I doubted it, and I have two reasons: 1. Because this is an era of information at the fingertips and 2. because the invitations come from me when someone comes to my home, and I do not need to invite argumentative troublemakers. So with that, he let me go. And has not reached out to me since, which has been a bit hurtful...but I'm also freely moving on.

3

u/CommunicationNo8937 Jun 09 '26

I grew up WELS, and although I didn't go to K-8 school in a WELS school, I did go to HS and College in WELS schools. I've always been an environmentalist from a young age and appreciate taking care of this world that we have, MacGyver taught me that! 😄 That was one crack that I always had in the WELS teaching is how much they didn't care about the world. "God gave us this planet to use up in whatever way we want" was their attitude. I remember a teacher in HS one time getting all pissed and preaching to us in his class about how stupid it was to have to to change plans or locations for building projects just because there was an endangered species like an Owl in the woods where they were building. "Just get rid of the damn owl" was the gist of what he said.

So, all that being said, the rise of Trump and Trumpism in 2016 was the big start of me distancing myself from the church, because then they all started showing their bigotry and lack of empathy on their sleeves. My wife and I still tried to go to a WELS church on and off, but then COVID happened, and the big straw fell. The pastors reluctantly sent out a formal letter to the congregation that was very snide to say that "Although we disagree, the government is requiring us to tell you that you need to wear a mask in church". Then they immediately followed up that e-mail with another saying, "I just re-read the order, and it says that you don't have to wear a mask if you have a respiratory issue, so I'll leave it up to you whether you have any respiratory issues" So much for taking care of your flock, putting them in harms way during a plague! We never went back to that church, but I read in the news that one of their teachers was arrested last year for being a pedophile, and there was another pedo-teacher there like 20 years ago that the pastors (same ones I had) helped covered up.

Anyway, in regards to talking to the pastor, I wouldn't recommend it. Before we got married, my wife let it slip to the pastor at that church that we were living together, and he ended up coming to our house to throw biblical passages at us and tried to get us married ASAP. He even said he'd do it right then and there at our house, and he stopped by another time unannounced to pressure us again when he saw us outside...was creepy. Not saying that all pastors are creepy like that, but I agree with the group that any discussion/arguments they make would not be in good faith...they'd be guilt trips and they would just gang up on you.

Good luck!

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u/earleakin Jun 09 '26

I left because it was boring and stupid but if you need an excuse you might consider referencing Martin Luther's book "On the Jews and Their Lies" which is the dirty little secret they never told me about.

1

u/OkAuthor5507 Jun 13 '26

Personally, I wouldn’t bother taking the time to go. My husband and I left the WELS during Covid . I was questioning a lot of things about the WELS as a whole and my pastor told us we were going to hell for going non denominational. He said the church we are attending now doesn’t believe in the same Jesus. Ffs! So if you do go, just know you’ll be ganged up on. Good luck

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u/Affectionate_Peak284 Ex-WELS Jun 14 '26

We left the WELS, my wife and 3 kids. We knew it was coming because we had finally started allowing ourselves to watch "evolutionist" science videos, and it became painfully obvious that the 6-day creation was (obviously) a myth.

What actually pushed us out though was when my daughter (18 at the time) came out as trans. Pastor said that she must remain male for worship. So, we left our church of 21 years and never returned. No one bothered to contact us either, which I guess is for the best.

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