I’ve been banging on Concordia Health Plan’s publication Better Health for years. To sum up my take from 2013 (“Better Health Poorer Christianity” 7-29-2013) and from 2009 (“Food for Thought” 11-09-2009), I would subtitle Better Health with :Poorer Theology.
I don’t relish continuing to bang this drum; it’s just I thought that once I retired, once I was out of the Concordia Health Plans, they’d leave me alone. But in the memorable words of Al Pacino, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull be back in!” Like a quarterly plague they mail be the pablum, the thin gruel, the wisdom of the world which according to James 2:15 is “sensual and demonic.”
The latest missive of misery contains news that the editor is retiring and the “talented writers of Concordia Plans will be your new guides on this path of well-being.”[1] Doesn’t that move you to sing, “Don’t worry; be happy” with that 1988 song? Or jump to 1994 and chant “Hakuna Matata”. Or go with circa 2002 Walgreen’s “Be Well” campaign. Up till 2015 that’s what the cashier was supposed to say after checking you out. If they just could’ve hung on for 5 more years they would’ve been ahead of the “stay well”, “be safe”, “we’re in this together” campaigns of our 21st century pandemic.
There really is no way you won’t get apparatchiks in an aged organization. The problem is when these lead that organization. They are true believers alright, not necessarily of that organization’s doctrine but certainly true believers in that organization. This is the OBS, Our Beloved Synod, virus that infects longtime members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
And apparatchiks are nice people except to those they perceive to be a threat to the organization. Then all bets are off. These Barney Fifes of their little Mayberry are like Pit Bulls in defense of their system. And you can’t really blame them. If you cut them, at least in the LCMS, they bleed purple, purple-palace that is. This is what those outside the organization dubbed the LCMS’ new headquarters in the 1980’s. (If you Google “purple palace st louis” the first entry is “Tour the LCMS International Center”. One can hope a seminarian at the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Small Catechism might make this pilgrimage as Luther did to Rome and come away from his tour suitably vexed.)
The apparatchiks don’t create, they protect. They didn’t think up Better Health, some ‘leader’, board, or committee did. Actually, with most such things in the church (of any denomination), it’s first found in the world. However it came to be, 40 years ago the idea of a newsletter that focused on this life and the first death, as opposed to eternal life and the second death was birthed. Interestingly up until that time, and at least till 1988 because I talked to him then, the LCMS had a full time pastor devoted to studying and responding to secret societies like the Masons. If you had an issue, a dilemma, or needed educating on anything to do with them, that guy was there for you.
Was he an apparatchik? I didn’t think so. It’s hard to be a cog in a wheel supporting one organization when you’re up to your armpits in studying spiritually cancerous ones. But if your aim is protecting, enhancing, empowering this life, that gels well with any earthbound if not moribund organization.
[1] We are told in the Fall 2024 edition that Kelly Menke holds a Master of Science in Public Health from that renowned scholarly institution Southern New Hampshire University and a BA from another Mecca for brainiacs, the online Ashford “University”. Now remember I have a BA from Southwest Texas State University which in the year I enrolled was voted by Playboy to be the best partying school in the nation. My point is that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod recognizes decrees others do not. A LCMS chaplain in the Army National Guard had a Ph.D. from an institution that the U.S. Army rejected! Likewise, Rev. Dr. Ken Klaus, speaker of “The Lutheran Hour” for over 10 years, got his advanced degree from storefront diploma mill. So enamored with letters before and after names that the LCMS accepts them from anywhere. With Aaron Tippin I’ve got a “Working Man’s Ph.D.”.