I cannot stress this enough: you will never complain your way into a pure Body of Christ or a better society. You cannot criticize things until they get better. You can write up article after article on how bad things are; maybe people will even listen to you, go "Yeah!" and then go back to doing nothing. Until you do something, build something, and start actually doing the job of Reforming and Restoring the Church, the subversives in charge can safely ignore you. Oh, sure, they might get worried enough to kick you out of a church and ruin your life, but that just means you're even less of a threat to them. If your Church hates you, leave. If your institutions suck, build new ones. If you want a Reformation, you have to start Reforming. And that is the mission of the Very Lutheran Project at large: we reform by the ethos of "schism now and avoid the rush." so people will have a place to go when their churches inevitably betray them.

@SuperLutheran The problem is that while everyone might want change, nobody can agree on what they want instead.

Complaining casts a wide net and gets you a lot of support, but once you start suggesting solutions, you'll find that support erode and your support fracture into deferring groups with their out values and interests.

It takes a lot of resources to "reform and rebuild" anything, and historically consensus is built by the strong imposing THEIR vision on the weak.

@Tfmonkey Well that's what we're here for.
The tsk of the VLP is to build an alternative to the subverted institutions with resources for those who want to do something different. If I build it, people will come - and they have been!

As for the power issue, the Catacomb Synod is structured with such strong congregationalism that I have extremely little actual authority. I just provide the resources and train those who want help building. What people do with it is their business, and if they need help there I am.

Thus far this model has been working very well and is expanding. We're going somewhere with this.

@SuperLutheran Having a hands off approach and letting congregations do their thing will certainly work for growth, but how will you maintain consistency when it comes to the particulars of the religion?

There is a reason there are thousands and thousands of Christian denominations which all interpret the Bible differently and promote different values and politics.