Ed Hinnefeld Called to His Eternal Home - Who will now be the "Watch Dog?"

Christian News, October 4, 2010

Ed Hinnefeld Called to His Eternal Home
Who will now be the “Watch Dog?”
Some 50 years ago Dr. William Oesch, one of the world’s leading Lutheran theologians said that the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod needed a “theological watchdog” at the LCMS’s Lutheran Building in St. Louis. It would be the “watch dog’s” responsibility to read all the theological publications in the LCMS, publications of the LCMS colleges and seminaries, the many newspapers being published in the LCMS at the time (most have now ceased publication) books written by those on the LCMS clergy roster, the leading theological journals and the most important theological books being published throughout the world. Each day the “watch dog” would then present a summary to the LCMS officials to keep them informed about what was going on theologically in the world and particularly the LCMS.

Most church officials in the various denominational bureaucracies are rather theologically uninformed about what is really going on in the theological world.

When Oesch was a young pastor in England he began the short lived Crucible. Later when he went to Germany he became the editor of the scholarly Lutherischer Rundblick, which he recognized few in the U.S. were reading. The congregation of his nephew Gene Oesch in Houston, Texas, helped finance this fine publication which was even recognized at the Vatican. Oesch insisted on receiving Christian News via airmail.

When Christian News began and regularly kept readers informed about what was going on in the church world, reviewing numerous publications and hundreds of books, some said that the LCMS now had a watch dog the LCMS did not have to pay a salary.
Lutheran Hour speaker, Walter Maier, who died in 1950, recognized that the LCMS also needed a financial watch dog. He urged his good friend and supporter Fred Rutz to study the LCMS’s finances. Some years later Rutz invited the CN editor to visit him in his home near Cleveland to show CN what he had found out about the LCMS’s finances. CN then helped him promote his pamphlet “A Business Man Looks At His Church.” The LCMS bureaucrats were not too happy with Rutz. He exposed the tremendous growth of the LCMS bureaucracy and how little of the money LCMS members contributed for missions was actually going for missions. Walter Maier Still Speaks-Missouri and the World Should Listen has a section on Fred Rutz.

After Rutz, Ed Hinnefeld, whose long record of seeking open financial disclosure in the LCMS is in this issue, became the LCMS’s much needed financial watchdog. He exposed the ever increasing growth of the LCMS’s bureaucracy while the LCMS was shrinking and mission work was being cut. There were millions to build costly district offices and a huge synodical office building, pay bureaucrats at the International Center and CPH several times more than the average pastor, pay youth leaders like Rich Bimler undeserved honorariums for doing very little, etc. Hinnefeld did not back down even when the LCMS’s Board of Directors unanimously opposed him. The LCMS Board of Directors voted to pay Ralph Bohlmann his full high presidential salary plus benefits for more than a year until Bohlmann was eligible for his huge pension. The BOD gave him a great “Golden Parachute”. When A.L. Barry defeated him he should have taken a call from one of the many vacant LCMS parishes rather than remaining in St. Louis and causing trouble for Barry, eventually serving as a “ghost writer” for Kieschnick and being a leader of the “40 of 2010” which called for the re-election of Jesus First candidate Kieschnick and defeat of Harrison.

The Schwan Foundation poured millions into the LCMS and CPH, financed many worthy causes, but did not help serve as a financial watchdog. Far too often money from the Schwan Foundation simply enabled the bureaucrats to live higher on the hog. Several who worked on LCMS and CPH projects financed by the Schwan Foundation told CN how money seemed to be no object even when it came to ordering fancy meals and using the most expensive equipment and paper. When Pastor Jack Cascione’s Reclaim News reported that tax records of the Schwan Foundation showed that the two top executives of the Foundation were receiving, besides their pensions as retired pastors, around 300 thousand and 480 thousand a year, CN asked the Schwan Foundation to inform CN if Cascione’s report was not correct. CN noted that when someone leaves CN a large sum of money it is used for publishing CN, the AAT and other books, not to pay anyone a high salary. CN discussed this with Hinnefeld.

Now that Ed Hinnefeld has been called to his eternal home, the LCMS needs another watchdog to follow Fred Rutz and Ed Hinnefeld. “Curb the Bureaucracy,” an overture the editor’s congregation submitted to the 2010 LCMS convention documented the tremendous growth of the LCMS bureaucracy and the liberal theological position taken by the LCMS’s Council of Presidents majority which defended the theological position of Seminex and even voted to place and outspoken evolutionist on the LCMS’s CTCR. The overpaid bureaucrats saw to it that the overture did not come up at the convention. Who will be the watchdog who will continue calling for full disclosure of the LCMS’s finances, call for the returning of all bureaucrats, including district presidents to the parish ministry, cutting down on costly meetings and travel, paying bureaucrats little more then the salary of the average pastor, etc.