Mass Immigration in the Name of God: Countering Disinformation About LCMS RSOs

Brief:
Matthew Harrison’s February 2025 letter on U.S. immigration and Lutheran organizations attempts to relieve himself and the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod body politic of any and all culpability for money laundering. His false statements and use of dissembling rhetoric are examined here, to the conclusion that Harrison and the LCMS are indeed guilty of crimes against the American people, whether a charge of money laundering sticks or not. Indeed, through their facilitation of mass immigration, the LCMS, its Recognized Service Organizations, and the leadership who oversee them both, are all guilty of economic (and otherwise) violence against United States citizens.

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In aerial warfare, the two biggest dangers are radar, and your own heat signature; both can be used to direct missiles to your aircraft, and ultimately to bring you down. That is why many aircraft carry two countermeasures when flying into enemy space: chaff, and flares.

Chaff is released in the aircraft’s wake to obscure radar, effectively allowing the aircraft itself to evade radio detection. Flares burn extremely hot for several seconds, enough to fool heat-seeking missiles into chasing them away from the aircraft. Both of these countermeasures are vital for ensuring that the aircraft itself can continue on its mission, unimpeded and intact.

This very strategy of deploying evasive countermeasures was, by analogy, employed by Matthew Harrison, Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) president, this past week in his response to inferences of money laundering operations involving LCMS Recognized Service Organizations. Let me explain.

General Flynn Tweet and Response

On February 1st, 2025, retired General Mike Flynn posted the tweet in the below screenshot, noting that billions of American Government dollars have been directed to various Lutheran Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).

Elon Musk agreed and amplified, noting that the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was on the case.

These statements naturally raised many questions for Lutherans. Many were sure that this was predictable Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) funny business. Others appealed to Lutheran leaders for a statement.

The ELCA statement came immediately, as their Presiding Bishop appeared on video the very next day to rebuke General Flynn and his accusations.

President Harrison of the LCMS, however, had a fortuitously scheduled Council of Presidents meeting from February 3rd through February 6th. That council eventually produced the statement from Harrison’s desk, published on February 6th.

You can read his statement in full here.

Unfortunately, rather than accepting accountability and owning what amounts to — at best — gross negligence in his duties to oversee matters of the Synod, Harrison chose the path of Deny, Deflect, and Defend. In short, he launched chaff and flares, and embarked on a strategy of evasive countermeasures in an attempt to shake pursuit.

Addressing Harrison’s disinformation, then, is the major objective of this essay.

Roll Up Your Sleeves

Before getting into Harrison’s glaring omissions and half-truths, it behooves us to consider his rhetorical skill as employed in this missive.

He begins with “Grace and peace in Jesus!” followed by a gratuitous block quote from Ephesians 1:15-23, where Paul gives thanks for the believers in Ephesus and extols Christ.

This is an interesting choice for Harrison, who has a track record of getting straight to the meat of what he considers a pressing issue for the Synod. Compare and contrast his opening in his letter on the death of George Floyd.

Or consider how he began his denunciation of the “alt-right.”

In fact, I can find no cases of such gratuitous Scriptural citation as a preamble to a letter going at least as far back as 2022, only perhaps a single verse used as a leading line in one out of eight cases. See for instance this example from Harrison’s letter about the Buffalo shooting.¹

Though of course in the sequel he was back to his usual style of beginning with a punchy thesis statement.

I point out this aberration in his typical style because, cynically, this gratuitous citation of St. Paul is an appeal to good faith and transparency before the audience in precisely the same way as the magician declaring that there is nothing up his sleeve — with accompanying cuff-tugging flourish.

Perhaps you are not yet prepared to make so severe of a judgement, and that is well enough. I will come to more supporting reasons for this assessment as we progress.

Runnin’ Against the Wind

Next, after a paragraph of recap on the Flynn/Musk Tweets to introduce the controversy, Harrison embarks on a three paragraph campaign of Public Relations-coded assertions about the LCMS.

• The LCMS is a law-abiding and patriotic church body.
• The LCMS uses legal means to fight for First Amendment rights when those rights are under attack.
• The LCMS loves all people. 

These focus-group-tested assertions are then backed up with further assertions, each in turn.

But perhaps the most remarkable comes in the form of this run-on sentence for the ages:

We have suffered formal legal action and much more as we have watched as DEI philosophy (formally rejected by our church body along with white supremacy) has pervaded nearly every aspect of government activity, even as the U.S. government has burgeoned beyond all ethical and rational propriety, in effect stealing the future from our children.

This sentence attempts to invite sympathy, portraying the Synod as embattled defenders of the First Amendment. What makes it remarkable is the appeals it makes in so doing.

In the first place, the legal action against Synod is unspecified. Through context we are given to infer that it had something to do with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), but Harrison does not say that outright. A strictly technical reading allows us only to conclude that the Synod has suffered formal legal action concurrent with the emergence of DEI, but not as the result of it. The type of rhetorical sleight of hand that politicians and used car salesmen alike are known to employ.

But can we be charitable and assume that Harrison had a specific case in mind?

Well, it’s possible that he was thinking of the suit brought against Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) by Dr. Gregory Schulz. What would make this an odd reference, of course, is the fact that the cause of Dr. Schulz’s lawsuit was his suspension after exposing the school for its growing DEI initiative. That is, the school’s DEI push was the first domino in the sequence that led to this lawsuit being brought. So, yes, in a sense the Synod has suffered formal legal action over DEI, but the catch is that they were the ones promoting it!

And the LCMS owned and operated Concordia University System (CUS) schools still rigorously adhere to it to this day. See photo carousel for images taken from their websites on January 24th, 2025.

And let us not forget that our seminary and the Lutheran Church Extension Fund are also lite participants via their recognition of a known heretic and gross sexual pervert.

Returning to the run-on sentence, no one missed the refrain of “condemning white supremacy,” which has featured in 90% or greater of Harrison’s public statements in the past two years. He just had to work that in.

But eventually we come to the end of the sentence, where Harrison asserts that “the U.S. government has burgeoned beyond all ethical and rational propriety, in effect stealing the future from our children.”

This is true, of course, but what Harrison does not specify is that the US Government has done so precisely through the USAID and HHS Grants that fund his LCMS RSOs!

Indeed, it is through NGOs — such as these LCMS RSOs — acting as the Deep State’s hands and feet to drive Kalergi replacement migration into Western nations that the future of our children has been stolen. Harrison wants to bluster that fault back upon the Federal Government, but the burden is not so easily shaken, as we shall see.

LIaRS LIaRS

After stating in no uncertain terms that “The LCMS is officially pro-immigrant,” Harrison goes on to tell a story about how, after a long, long partnership, the LCMS separated from Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. He makes sure that he includes a vignette depicting himself as the bold confessor standing up to an ELCA heretic for good measure. He is the hero we need, you see.

But the reason for the LCMS’s departure from LIRS (which was partial, at best) is not specified. Harrison alludes to it being in order to remove the LCMS from “cooperation in externals” with the ELCA and its secularizing influence on e.g. sexual morality, and an overall diminishment in Lutheran identity. But overall the story reads more as one of love slowly grown cold rather than any line-in-the-sand moment.

“We just slowly grew apart and became different people and eventually went our separate ways” is far from the heroic stand for the truth that Harrison tries to bring into the picture. Notice that his statement to the ELCA Bishop, “I’m no longer sure we are praying to the same God,” came at least six years before the LCMS quietly divorced from LIRS, despite the fact that Harrison was LCMS president for all of that intervening time, which would have also contained, at minimum, two LCMS National Conventions.

Further, during that time when Harrison concluded that the ELCA might have a different God, and after, he and his LCMS administration had a very, very close relationship with LIRS indeed.

So close, in fact, that the LCMS’s Commission of Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) report, “Immigrants Among Us: A framework for addressing immigration issues” was coauthored with LIRS in 2012.

As a brief digression, the primary drafter of this report, identified above as Leopoldo Sanchez, was also the author of the Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications (LCACA) essay on Social Justice, which attempted to rehabilitate the concept for incorporation into Lutheran theology. Here is a video for a brief window into his ideology regarding immigration.

He is also one of, if not the, primary actors for organizing the annual Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Multiethnic Symposium each year. Multiethnic multiculturalism (that is, literally: DEI) is almost, as the kids would say, his whole personality.

At any rate, here is the Immigrants Among Us document, which is even today still prominently featured at the very top of the LCMS webpage on immigration.

In this document, co-authored with LIRS, the immigration NGO is referenced a surprising number of times.

The authors of the document (Sanchez and LIRS) consider the idea that immigration should be regulated to avoid the ethnic balkanization of the United States through multiracialism and multinationalism to be immoral discrimination.

Further examples of LCMS leadership’s partnership with LIRS, and their disdain for the native White population of the United States (and hence of the LCMS itself) could be multiplied. And, to give you an idea of the scope, they will be.

For instance, in 2013 Bart Day served as Executive Director of the Office of National Mission for Harrison’s LCMS, and concurrently served on the Board of Directors for LIRS. His thoughts in favor of immigration reform (a euphemism for amnesty for illegals) can be read below in his editorial advocating for the S.744 legislation.

A summary of S.744, quoted from the Congressional Budget Office:

S. 744 would revise laws governing immigration and the enforcement of those laws, allowing for a significant increase in the number of noncitizens who could lawfully enter the United States on both a permanent and temporary basis. Additionally, the bill would create a process for many individuals who are present in the country now on an unauthorized basis to gain legal status, subject to requirements specified in the bill. The bill also would directly appropriate funds for tightening border security and enforcing immigration laws, and would authorize additional appropriations for those purposes.

In short, this was one of the Obama-era tactics for flooding the United States with foreigners.

But the LCMS in partnership with LIRS (and ELCA) did more under Harrison to advocate for S.744 than write editorials. It also sent members of the Council of Presidents (CoP) to Capitol Hill to advocate for the legislation.

When Harrison says “The LCMS is officially pro-immigrant,” you’d best believe him.

Also in 2013, the LCMS voted in convention to “Give Thanks and Praise for LIRS 75th Anniversary”.

Here is the text of that resolution:

WHEREAS, In 1939, Lutherans in the United States, committed to the mercy work of the church, rose up to 41 help Lutheran refugees from Europe displaced by World War II; and

WHEREAS, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), in partnership with Lutheran congregations 44 across the country, has resettled over 400,000 refugees in its 75 years of ministry; and

WHEREAS, Christians are called to welcome the stranger (Deut. 10:18–19; Matt. 25:36), working to protect, 47 embrace, and empower migrants and refugees through ministries of service and justice; and

WHEREAS, LIRS in partnership with Lutheran congregations continues to serve over 10,000 refugees and 50 20,000 detained torture survivors, victims of trafficking, and unaccompanied children every year; and

WHEREAS, The ministry of LIRS is still sorely needed in today’s war-strewn, conflict-ridden world; therefore be it

Resolved, That the Synod declare Sunday, June 22, 2014, as Refugee Sunday in which congregations offer 1 thanks and praise to God for the 75 years of mercy work for migrants and refugees through Lutheran Immigration 2 and Refugee Service; and be it further

Resolved, That the Synod invite congregations to tell the stories of their acts of welcome to refugees and 5 migrants―signs of witness, mercy, and life together; and be it further

Resolved, That the Synod utilize its communications mechanisms to share these stories and inspire action 8 throughout the LIRS 75th anniversary year; and be it finally

Resolved, That the Synod encourage congregations and organizations to engage with and support the LIRS 11 mission of welcoming the stranger through gifts of time, talent, and treasure.

Here are Linda Hartke’s (LIRS President) remarks from the convention podium:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, thank you for your affirmation of our shared ministry of welcome.  Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is your partner in ministries of mercy — and for nearly 75 years we have answered the question “who is my neighbor” with faith, hope and love as we welcome newcomers.

This work of mercy began with many of our own ancestors — Lutherans fleeing the cataclysm of war in Europe … and Lutherans in this land opening their hearts and their homes.

Today Lutherans all across America continue to stand for welcome — together this year we will receive nearly 12,000 newly arrived refugees — most from Iraq, Burma and Bhutan.  They flee war and torture, religious and ethnic persecution — they long to be able to return to their homeland, but after many years waiting in refugee camps some of the 14  million refugees in the world will make the overwhelming journey to begin a new life in a new homeland in the United States. And I praise God because you are there to embrace these new neighbors in your local communities and schools, your workplaces and churches.

We are also called to lift up our voices and act for some of the most vulnerable brothers and sisters among us — as the 2010 Synod Convention recognized when you overwhelmingly adopted an overture on human trafficking.

The LCMS and LIRS have partnered to launch the End Human Trafficking Campaign and many congregations and youth groups have used the Bible study, video and prayer resources to learn and take action.  Thanks to you, we have already delivered more than 1,000 petitions to the White House.

I also give thanks that the LCMS is playing a leading role in the theological reflection that undergirds ministries of mercy with aspiring Americans.  We should all be grateful for the work of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) in preparing their report, “Immigrants Among Us,” which every congregation and churchworker has received.

I encourage you to join us in preparing for the 75th anniversary of our shared ministry with newcomers next year.  It will be a time to celebrate, recall the stories of lives forever changed by your congregations’ hospitality, and recommit ourselves to welcoming newcomers.

Thanks be to God.

In 2014 and 2015 LIRS released “Refugee Sunday” resource kits, which the LCMS promoted to their member congregations.

These kits came in three flavors: ELCA, LCMS, and LIRS, which were customized for their respective audience. You can get the idea of what these kits contained (such as Sunday school outlines, bulletin inserts, litanies, etc.) from this 2014 kit PDF.

Notably, LCMS pastors are directed to look online at the LIRS Refugee Sunday Kit website for sermon notes to aid in preaching the message of Refugee Sunday from LCMS pulpits.

The 2014 edition sermon notes were written for LIRS by John Nunes, former head of Lutheran World Relief (which shares a street address with LIRS)…

…who wrote the LCACA essay condemning gentrification, and has since left the LCMS roster to act as president of an ELCA university.

The 2015 edition sermon notes were written for LIRS by Larry Vogel, who in 2023 published his PhD thesis, Behind the Numbers: A Traditional Church Faces a New America. In this paper, he argues that LCMS membership decline is due to the Synod’s racial/ethnic homogeneity (its Whiteness, in so many words), and reversing course requires aggressively striving to become a multicultural, multiethnic church. If this sounds like Leopoldo Sanchez, referenced above, then it will come as no surprise that Sanchez was on the board of approval for this paper.

Here is the full paper.

Also in 2014, the LCMS gave a $100,000 grant to LIRS to support their work of settling foreigners into your American communities.

Moving on, in 2016 the LCMS held a run so that the National Youth Gathering participants could raise money for LIRS — the check totaled $30,000 of LCMS member money.

Also that year, the LCMS in convention gave thanks for LIRS in resolution 3-05A, the text of which is as follows:

In 2017 Matthew Harrison’s Executive Director of the Office of National Mission, Bart Day, was back on Capitol Hill with ELCA Bishop Elizabeth Eaton (same as appears in the video above) to meet with Nancy Pelosi on behalf of LIRS.

As best as I can tell, it was in 2018 that the LCMS quietly distanced itself from LIRS, because that is when the LCMS Reporter stopped using the “Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service” tag.

But why then? Did the LCMS leadership have a quiet change of heart regarding the flooding of immigrants into the United States? Did they suddenly realize just how bad the ELCA was (despite Harrison’s claim that he realized they worshipped a different God years before)?

No.

2018 was the year that Linda Hartke, CEO of LIRS since 2010, was fired over “financial irregularities” which occurred during her tenure. This may have had the effect of scaring the LCMS leadership off, or so it seems to me.

Original story of financial mismanagement/fraud

Followup story of Hartke’s termination

That did not stop the LCMS in convention from voting in 2019 to again commend the CTCR Report “Immigrants Among Us” (see above), co-authored with LIRS, for study and discussion…

…but it seems to be the end of an era when it comes to LIRS partnership with the LCMS.

Ongoing Relationship

Earlier I compared the end of the LCMS’s relationship with LIRS to a quiet divorce. However, as is sometimes the case in these quiet divorces: despite separate domiciles, frequent nights over still sometimes happen.

Of LIRS, Harrison in his new letter claims, “For the past five years, the LCMS has provided no funding to LIRS and has provided no official representation on the board.”

Implied is that the LCMS was providing funding and board representation prior to five years ago, but that’s easily enough inferred from the foregoing section. What I want to focus on, one at a time, are two facts which Harrison conveniently omits:

1. The LCMS continues to have representation on the LIRS Board of Directors (BoD)
2. While the LCMS no longer provides funds to LIRS, the Synod does continue to provide funds to LIRS proxies in the immigration business

Let’s begin at one.

Rev. Dr. Yared Halche is the Executive Director of Witness and Interethnic
Ministries for the LCMS Southeastern District. His bio, from the LCMS Southeastern District web page, states in part, “He currently serves as Mission Engagement Facilitator with the focus on Interethnic Mission Initiatives in the Southeastern District.”

That is, Halche is a Synod employee.

At the same time, he serves on the LIRS (currently DBA Global Refuge) BoD, where his representation as an LCMS employee is prominently displayed.

This means that Harrison’s claim that “the LCMS has provided…no official representation on the board” is guilty of gerrymandering around a technical definition in a manner that would have made the Pharisees blush. A sort of Clintonesque, “that depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Only here, the word is “official.”

It may be true that Halche was not appointed to hold this board position by an official act of a board or an officer of the LCMS (or, since Halche himself is an officer, should I say another officer). Insofar as that is concerned, we can say that he is not “official representation.”

However, this is not satisfying to the intellectually honest or fair minded person for the simple fact that we still have an official Synod employee representing the LCMS on the LIRS BoD, in his official Synod position and not as a private citizen (hence, again, his label on the LIRS webpage). It is “official” in several senses of the term, but Harrison, in an artful lie, chooses to deny official representation based on another sense of it. He made the conscious choice to conceal the fact that the LCMS does in fact have an employee on the BoD, rather than admitting to the same and elaborating on the nature of that relationship.

The discerning reader will recognize the signs of a politician in full spin here. Robert Baker, who previously worked with Concordia Publishing House (CPH) on a bevy of projects has alluded to exactly this sort of political factor, appealing to the well-known fact that Harrison, himself the head of LCMS World Relief from 2001 until his election to the office of President in 2010, came to power because of connections made in the world of Lutheran social service organizations such as LIRS (and more, which we are coming to).

For instance, he was known to be close to John Nunes, then head of Lutheran World Relief (LWR) (not to be confused with LCMS World Relief) as the two were the heads of counterpart organizations at that point. Nunes himself, who was also briefly mentioned previously, is also an outspoken proponent of a multiethnic/multicultural America and church, and is on record in multiple places disparaging the LCMS for its racial makeup.

Which brings me to the second thing omitted by Harrison: that the LCMS does continue to provide funds to LIRS proxies in the immigration business.

RSO Status

In order to understand what is happening here, you must first be aware of the category of LCMS Recognized Service Organization (RSO).

To bring you up to speed, here are the FAQs from the LCMS’s own page.

What is a Recognized Service Organization (RSO)?
A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that is independent of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) but whose operations foster the mission and ministry of the church, whose program activities are in harmony with the Synod, and who agrees to respect and not act contrary to the doctrine and practice of the Synod. Such organizations that meet this criteria have applied for and have been granted status as an RSO.

What are the benefits of becoming an RSO?
There are a number of benefits for the applying organization. For example, an RSO has the ability to call ordained and commissioned ministers on the LCMS roster, use the LCMS logo, and obtain loans through the Lutheran Church Extension Fund.

It’s that last bit that concerns us here. “Obtain loans through the Lutheran Church Extension Fund.” That is, the LCEF, which you might think of as the bank of the LCMS, where funds are invested, and loans and credit are offered to qualifying parties. Those organizations that are approved for LCMS RSO status are given lines of credit from the LCEF.

The money in the LCEF is almost entirely a product of usury (their periodical is literally called Interest Time; no, I am not making that up), but some does come from other sources, such as bequests, where they entice the elderly to leave them a sum of their estate to avoid pesky estate and income taxes.

They do, of course, accept donations. But why donate when you can invest?

Returning to the point: we have established that LCMS RSOs are therefore funded by Synod’s bank, insofar as they take advantage of the credit and investing services that LCEF provides, among all of the other benefits the LCMS offers to its RSOs.

Oh, by the way, the President and CEO of LCEF? Bart Day, the same man we saw earlier was working with ELCA’s Elizabeth Eaton to lobby Nancy Pelosi on immigration services while he sat on the LIRS BoD in 2017. In fact, it was September 1st of that same year that Day stepped into this role with the LCEF, and it was November 11th that year that allegations of financial corruption at LIRS hit the press (see above). Sounds like someone found the eject button just in time.

Now, I’m not insinuating that Day perpetrated any financial crimes. I am noting the objective historical fact that he was on the LIRS BoD when they happened. And then he got promoted into a position where he’s the top dog running lines of credit from the LCMS bank to LCMS RSOs, many of which turn out to be mass immigration NGOs.

Sobering.

Now let’s take a look at the LCMS RSOs themselves.

LCMS RSOs = Immigration NGOs

Let me give you a copy of the LCMS RSO directory.

Here is a list of LCMS RSOs that deal with immigration, as compiled on the LCMS website.

I’m going to cut right to the chase: I have gone through the publicly available tax documentation of these groups and have found that in a stunning number of cases, they receive millions of dollars from LIRS to act as subcontractors for bringing wave after wave of immigrants to US soil and settling them into American communities.

To restate: When Harrison writes that the LCMS no longer provides funds to LIRS, he is deliberately omitting the fact that the Synod provides funds to LIRS proxies, i.e. subcontractors.

This is trivially easy to discover by simply perusing the LIRS 990 forms. Here’s the most recent as of this writing:

For your ease, I took a screenshot of a portion of Section I, detailing grants and other monies bestowed by LIRS on other organizations. The NGOs boxed in red are just some of the LCMS RSOs.

A note on “Children’s Services,” as some of these are marked. Money coming from LIRS for this purpose are used for unaccompanied minor children which are not United States citizens. Hence, still for immigration services.

The LCMS still works with LIRS financially, just through proxies like LCEF and its RSOs.

In fact, if we return to the list of Lutheran NGOs posted by General Flynn, we do indeed see LCMS representation.

RSO Madness!

What I am going to do now is take you on a whirlwind tour of some LCMS RSO/mass immigration NGO information. The point of this section is to invite you to ponder what the LCMS is up to being in bed with these organizations. I’ll suggest it is a constellation of factors, such as love of money, love of acclaim, exchange of political favors, and good ol’ fashioned elite disdain for the American people, upon which they have foisted a tidal wave of immigration, particularly over the past four years.

Let’s begin with:

Lutheran Social Services of the National Capitol Area (LSSNCA)

The former board chair of this RSO recently testified in writing that LSSNCA had LCMS approval for its immigration and foster care programs.

Let’s look at what those entail.

Foster care first. Do I understand this correctly that the LCMS approves of inviting and encouraging members of “the LGBTQIA+ community” to foster children?

I’m just reading what the man wrote.

And the LCMS must also be for mass immigration and resettlement, then.

I’m just reading what the man wrote.

And the LCMS approves of LSSNCA accepting a million dollars two years in a row from the Muslim Association of Virginia for “Afghan surge staffing”?

I’m just reading what the man wrote.

Of their total $24.6m of expenses in 2022 (most recent year on record), $20.7m (84%) went directly to foreigner resettlement, with LCMS approval.

I’m just reading what the man wrote.

Per Propublica, LSSNCA’s revenue went from $5.4m in 2019 to $31.8m in 2022.

How convenient that once the Biden administration took over, monies for immigrants became so very, very available to the LCMS’s mass immigration NGOs!

With LCMS approval.

That is what the man wrote.

Lutheran Community Services Northwest (LCSNW)

This LCMS RSO is very politically active in attempting to reshape laws for the benefit of the foreigners it brings in.

They are also very much engaged in the DEI that Harrison claims in his letter is oppressing Christian First Amendment speech rights.

To the point, and to the extent that they celebrate Sodomitic Pride Month.

Per ProPublica, in 2022 (most recent year available), LCSNW spent $12.8m of its $46.9m total spend (27%) on “immigration and refugee services”.

Note also orange highlight.

LCSNW does not like President Donald Trump taking away the mass immigration gravy train, and condemned his policies in no uncertain terms in an open letter.

And, of course, as per the RSO requirements, LCSNW has LCMS (x2) representation on their BoD.

Note the four board members fielded by the ELCA, of which Harrison stated in his letter:

It is difficult enough to carry out what we call “cooperation in externals” (for instance, doing mercy work together without church fellowship for the benefit of people in need) when we no longer agree on what the Gospel is. It is impossible when we can’t even agree on what the Law is.

And yet in each case, these LCMS RSOs/mass immigration NGOs carry board members of both LCMS and ELCA varieties.

Again, for the slow: these LCMS RSOs, which benefit from LCMS funds and have ELCA board members on them, often have more than one LCMS board member.

What is the LCMS doing? Are its leaders corrupt, or terminally stupid? In either case, LCMS congregant, why are you consenting to rule by the corrupt and stupid?

Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska (DBA Lutheran Family Services)

Per ProPublica, in 2023, this LCMS RSO spent $12.9m of its $24.8m spend (52%) on “refugee services.”

Note also that all-important “diversity” pledge in the organization’s mission. Harrison would be appalled, I have no doubt.

LCMS Nebraska District President (DP) Richard Snow is vice-chair on the BoD. On the board with him is Scott Johnson, the head bishop of the Nebraska Synod of the ELCA.

This bishop is exactly what you would expect of the ELCA, squared. Abortion promoting, sodomy loving, and Bible denying, all in one scalp-chinned package. Read all about Snow’s co-board member here.

As a brief aside, it seems that DP Snow heard enough good things about Dr. Vanessa Seifert’s work with the Lutheran Family Services executive team that he decided to hire her to train pastors in his district.

The Bible might say women should not be pastors, but it never says women should not teach pastors — checkmate, God!

I’m going to do one more. Not because there is only one more, but because my goal is not to be exhaustive, but to show you how trivially easy it is to fact check Matthew Harrison’s claims.

Lutheran Social Services of the South (DBA Upbring)

Per ProPublica, in 2023 this LCMS RSO spent $71.2m of its $117.8m revenue (60%) on “refugee resettlement”.

This one is noteworthy for its lack of LCMS representation on the BoD which, again, is a requirement for an LCMS RSO, which it is. Who’s in charge here?

In his letter, Harrison pledged² to have the LCMS Corporate conduct a review of the RSOs. Many people across Synod have been asking for this for most or all of his presidency, but in his typical fashion, it’s not a priority until bad press forces his hand. That’s when the disinformation apparatus spins into high gear, and you see what it looks like for a politician to speedrun Sweeney’s 25 Rules of Disinformation.

Harrison exemplifies his facility with evasive countermeasures when he defiantly asserts:

…[T]hough I do not agree philosophically with every operational aspect of LIRS, if there is something legally amiss, the blame falls squarely upon the federal government. LIRS — and even our own LCMS RSOs — simply does what the government asks and pays for them to do.

There are only two kinds of people who just do what their client asks and pays them to do with no compunctions:

Mercenaries.

And whores.

Which one is the LCMS and its subsidiaries?

The United States Are Done With Immigration

Harrison concludes his letter with an appeal to a peculiar form of the National myth:

“Who will contribute to this marvelous and blessed American experiment?”

He assumes that the American people are still finding themselves. Still figuring things out. Aw, shucks, let’s keep falling forward together.

But he’s wrong.

America First won decisively in our latest national poll: the presidential ballot box.

We want Harrison’s mass immigration operation shut down. We remember that LIRS brought over Ilhan Omar, who is a stench to the body politic…

…as she advocates for Somalis and replacement of the American people with more like her. And we know that even now Harrison’s RSOs are bringing over more of the same, who will take their turn at the wheel in transforming, not this American experiment — as if we exist in some petri dish for Harrison and his ilk to add various substrates to in order to watch what happens — but this American nation, for ourselves and our posterity.

It is a mathematical fact that since the COVID pandemic, when Matthew Harrison’s churches caved to political pressure to close up shop during Eastertide, native-born American workers have never resumed their upward trajectory vis a vis numbers in the United States workforce. Instead, all growth has gone strictly and solely to foreign-born workers.

Since July 2019, the American workforce has added 4.6 million foreign-born workers, while losing almost 700,000 native-born workers.

Matthew Harrison’s partner NGOs are a material part of that problem. The reason General Flynn is even looking into this matter, with Elon Musk backing him up, is that the current administration is in the discovery phase for crimes committed against the American people with immigration as the weapon.

The Lutherans popped a flag, as well they should. Even if there is never a shred of guilt established according to the letter of the law “just following government paymaster orders” (Harrison’s last-resort defense, as we’ve seen), these LCMS RSOs/mass immigration NGOs are still guilty of crimes against the American people, which the graphs above, combined with the information in this essay, are more than enough to establish beyond a shred of doubt.

Harrison could have bailed on the whole mass immigration NGO thing the moment he took office in 2010, but he had made too many friends in those offices as head of LCMS World Relief, who helped him on his political ascent. Even if he had pulled the LCMS completely out of all such activity when LIRS was in hot water in 2017/2018, at that late date and with so much quiet, patient urging from people low on the totem pole, he would not be being scrutinized now.

Every Bad Thing Comes to an End

Remember that, when you review all of Harrison’s bluster in his latest letter, he brought this on himself.

He’s in too deep now, he can only Deny, Deflect, and Defend. He can only launch chaff and flares, and hope that the men at the radar lose interest.

You are the men at the radar. I’ve shown you how to find the signal past the flares and chaff.

Now, what will you do with it?

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1. We are free to ponder why Harrison did not see fit to write a similar letter in the wake of a female transvestite’s assault on Covenant School in Nashville, TN on March 27, 2023, which resulted in the death of six people. Nor did the shooting at Abundant Life Christian School on December 16, 2024, which killed two people besides the shooter, qualify for such attention as George Floyd and the Buffalo supermarket. With as large of a parochial school system as the LCMS has, these omissions are quite befuddling. ↩︎
2. He has pledged many things in the past, such as the following. ↩︎

Harrison says,

It is also true that millions have been enticed and encouraged to enter illegally into this country by contradictory American voices at all levels: federal, state and local. I cannot but be sympathetic to their plight.

But Harrison himself is one of those contradictory voices, as he has previously promised to put LCMS resources at the disposal of those fighting deportation for unlawful entry (English translation below, original in Spanish).

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Appendix: HSS Grant Money to LCMS RSOs for Immigration Assistance

Total dollars granted to NGOs flagged for the term “Lutheran.”

Dollars separated by assistance category. Highlighted lines are all under the umbrella of immigration.

List of Lutheran NGOs marked as recipients for the above yellow highlighted categories. Purple highlighted are current LCMS RSOs as of the most recent (Oct 2024) list update.

All told, from HHS grants, LCMS RSOs received $244 million to facilitate mass immigration onto American soil for combined Fiscal Years 2023, 2024, and (the beginning of) 2025.