Michael Kraus (minister)
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For the American soccer player, see Michael Kraus.
Michael Kraus (March 26, 1908 - November 16, 2003) was a Canadian entrepreneur and minister in the New Apostolic Church.
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[edit] Immigrant
Mihail Krauss was the eldest son of a tavern-owning farmer in Meeburg, a village of 950 German-speaking Lutheran Saxons in the Transylvania region of Romania. According to Canadian immigration records, in 1926, at age 18, he boarded the Canadian Pacific ship Minnedosa, and emigrated to Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He often described his arrival saying, “I had only ten cents in my pocket, didn’t speak a word of English, didn’t know a soul; not even the dogs barked at me.” In the 1930s, he worked in a furniture factory by day. After hours he built apartments, beginning a life-long interest in real estate and construction. At some point his name was changed to Michael Kraus - it is not clear when this change occurred.
[edit] Entrepreneur
In 1941, Michael Kraus began importing fabrics to Canada. In 1946 he formed a partnership to manufacture fabric. Initially adopting fabric looms to manufacture carpet, he founded Kraus Carpet Mills in 1959. A daring expansion into fibre extrusion, he founded Strudex Fibres in 1971. By his death in 2003, Kraus companies employed over 900 people at facilities across Canada, in the United States and in Australia.
[edit] Minister
Michael Kraus joined the New Apostolic Church in 1932 and was ordained into the ministry one year later. Like other ministers in the New Apostolic Church, he served in a voluntary capacity, initially as an assistant local minister and later in various regional commissions. In 1955 he was ordained as an apostle and, in Zurich on June 21, 1958, he was ordained as a district apostle and national leader of the New Apostolic Church Canada. He traveled extensively, and sent fellow missionaries to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and establish the New Apostolic Church in over 70 countries, where church membership grew to over 4 million by his retirement in 1994. He organized the construction of thousands of church buildings in developing countries. His impact on the worldwide growth of the New Apostolic Church was so great, that at his funeral, Chief Apostle Richard Fehr compared it to the missionary work of Paul the Apostle of biblical times.
However, not every member of the New Apostolic Church thought so highly of Kraus. Some considered him a megalomaniac, a demanding and petty tyrant who insisted that his every edict should be obeyed without question, no matter how foolish or inconsequential. The following is an excerpt from a letter he sent to North American members in March 1989:
A New Apostolic member, a so-called scholar for the royal highness that waits for him, has only one thing to fulfill and that is: TO DO WHAT HE IS TOLD. HE HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO SAY. If God would permit His children, for whom the highest price is paid, to intervene with their own ideas, then the first step would be taken towards a mass confusion, as we have it in this world today. We pray: THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. So all those in heaven have nothing to say: ONLY THE SPIRIT OF GOD DECIDES WHAT IS TO BE DONE. The opposite of DEMOCRACY, which brought a mass confusion in our time, is AUTOCRACY. We looked it up in the dictionary and there the word AUTOCRACY is described as THE DIVINE WILL. This divine will reigns in the godly undertaking in our Church, and is protected by our Chief Apostle to the highest degree, which we support with all our life. The will of man is poison toward the will of God, and we have no room for poison in our Church. To those who do not agree with the above, I can only say that the Lord Jesus congregated them into a group by themselves and He gave them a special name; He called them FOOLS.
Note how Kraus confuses "autocracy" with "theocracy", the use of ALL CAPS in certain parts of the letter as if shouting, and how he refers to himself in the third person. Some took umbrage at being called "fools" simply for daring to disagree with Kraus, who considered himself one of the "Anointed of the Lord".
[edit] References
New Apostolic Church International News. District Apostle Michael Kraus: A quite exceptional servant of God entered into eternity!, <http://www.nak.org/en/news/naci-news/article/12654/>. Retrieved on 19 July 2007
Kraus Flooring: A History of Growth, <http://www.krausflooring.com/historyOfGrowth.htm>. Retrieved on 19 July 2007
“Kraus Carpet founder also was church leader”, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record: B4, November 19, 2003
“Kraus Carpet founder dies”, The Guelph Daily Mercury: A6, November 19, 2003
“A Twentieth-Century Paul. Funeral Service for District Apostle Michael Kraus”, Our Family: The Magazine of the New Apostolic Church 50: 14–15, January 2004
“Obituary: Michael Kraus”, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record: B11, November 21, 2003
