Impact of nepotism

jusrme wrote:Can you give some examples of husband-wife calls? Do you mean like a call for the pastor and a call for his wife at the day school of the congregation?

Yes, the situation we see most often is that if we call a pastor or principal whose wife graduated from MLC, the assumption is that the wife will end up teaching in the LES. One of my pastors argued, "It only MAKES SENSE to GIVE a teaching call to the pastor's wife." In my experience, the pastor's wife or principal's wife receives the first available call, if she wants it.

From time to time the weekly Call Report shows a call extended simultaneously to a husband-wife (principal-teacher) team.

On one very usual occasion I saw a congregation extend a teaching call to the wife of a pastor at a neighboring mission congregation (that had no LES) then follow up a year later by calling the pastor away from the mission, resulting in a husband-wife team at the larger congregation (and closure of the mission).

I see two problems with this practice.

First, a Doctrine textbook (Our Great Heritage?) used at MLC contains a long paper on call doctrine and practice exercised in WELS, and, according to that paper, husband-wife calls would be a bad situation due to apparent steering of calls.

Second, the secular world has concluded that husband-wife teams are bad (except in family-owned businesses) for numerous reasons.

Can you give some examples of husband-wife calls? Do you mean like a call for the pastor and a call for his wife at the day school of the congregation?

While nepotism is shunned (or treated with suspicion) in the secular business world, WELS seems to not only tolerate but also encourage nepotism as a Synodical tradition (e.g., husband-wife calls). Is WELS stronger for this practice?