LCEF Loans to Mega-Churches in Default?
By Rev. Jack Cascione

The grand daddy of mega-church loans is $14,000,000.00 lent by the Lutheran Church Extension Fund to Concordia Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas a few years ago . The Congregation reportedly supplied $5,000,000.00 of their own money, for a total of $19,000,000.00.

What did that buy? They changed locations and moved to a 47-acre site on a six-lane freeway. They then built five buildings including the largest administration building of any congregation in the LCMS. They borrowed and spent more money than any other LCMS congregation, but they didn't have enough to build a church, so the congregation now worships in the field house.

So what happened? Reclaim News has received information from one of the more than 30 staff members who were recently terminated, included teachers and visitation pastors.

It is reported that attendance has declined from 2800 to 2200 per Sunday. The congregation has been running deficits of more than $300,000.00 per year, for the last two years, for a current accumulated operational deficit of nearly a million dollars.

The LCEF has refinanced the loan and the congregation has increased school tuition.

Being a bona fide Texas District approved, COP adored, Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI), Pastoral Mentoring Congregation, as expected in a church growth congregation, the Voters only meet once a year and can't make a motion from the floor.

To help calm the troubled waters Pastor Thompson has initiated a couple of "Town Hall Meetings" where members can come and ask questions, a rare treat, but of course, they can't make motions from the floor.

Welcome to the brave new COP world of corporate mega-churches that have abandoned Walther's Church and Ministry and Voter Supremacy with the encouragement and approval of the Council of District Presidents (COP) and PLI.

The end result of turning confirmed members into shoppers, worshipers into spectators, owners into consumers, lovers of true doctrine into program groupies, is a church roster of converts with 6 hours of required instruction instead of catechized communicants.

Instead of subsidizing "little" mission congregations, many Districts now subsidize missions inside mega-churches, which is another way to subsidize the mega-churches. In other words, they are putting a lot more eggs in fewer baskets, and smaller congregations are funding the mega-churches.

We believe many of these highly touted mega-churches could not survive without District mission support and special consideration from LCEF. More than a third of a million dollars has been given as a direct grant to PLI by LCEF.

Our source from one of the more than thirty staff members removed from Concordia San Antonio, which once boasted of nearly a hundred staff members, could be in error. We are open to correction or clarification.

The financial resources of LCEF and the leadership of the Council of District Presidents (COP) are focused on removing church administration from Voters' Assemblies and disenfranchising the lay people in the name of efficiency. Welcome to leadership.

Majorities of LCMS pastors keep reelecting a theologically vacuous COP because they believe political and social leadership solutions are more effective than theology. This is not a conspiracy because it is all public. Instead of a concerted effort to indoctrinate, educate, and train the laity to run their own churches with supreme Voters' Assemblies, the COP is promoting the establishment of corporate bureaucracies.

There aren't enough clergy and paid staff in the world to do that.

The COP rallied around their choice for treasurer in the 1998 LCMS Convention. That same treasurer lost $40,000,000.00. We have all forgiven him. The Synod may soon have to forgive some major LCEF mega-church loans.

March 28, 2000