Get Ready – To Get Fired!

If you’re a fan of the Discovery Channel’s hit TV show Dirty Jobs, you might have noticed the similarity of the title of this post to the words host Mike Rowe says at the beginning of his show: Get ready – to get dirty! If you’re a delegate to the 2010 Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) Regular Convention in Houston this July and you’re planning to pull the lever in favor of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synod Structure and Governance recommendation on doing away with the Program Boards in the LCMS (Recommendation #18), then you might as well say in your best Mike Rowe voice:

Get ready – to get fired!

And if you’re an employee that was on one of the formerly existing Program Boards then you might as well say in your best Mike Rowe voice:

Get ready – to get packing!

…because that’s exactly what you’ll be doing. You’re going to be unceremoniously given your pink slip and shown the door, just like Jeff Schwarz and Todd Wilken, the Producer and Host of the radio show Issues, Etc., were when they got canned in March of 2008. You won’t have to worry about being fired during Holy Week though, because it’s going to happen a lot sooner than that. One well-placed source in the International Center told me that they were told that they’ll be out on the street as soon as October. It’s a good thing there’s going to be free health care.

If you happen to be one of the chosen few, you might be asked to stay on in some new capacity - depending on who the Synod President is at the time. If you're not of the same "ideology," better dust off that resumé.

So before you go pulling any levers in Houston, think carefully about how your vote will influence the trajectory of the Synod, and the way your choice will influence the lives of many of the employees throughout the Synod. The law of unintended consequences will have its way in ways many of us haven’t even considered.


Photo courtesy of the Discovery Channel.