Convention is only 10 days off! Here are a few bright spots I’ve noticed. I’m sure there are more. Please excuse me if I don’t include your favorites. If I have the opportunity, I may touch upon others later.
Continue reading “Bright Spots in the 2007 ELS President’s Report”
I wrote a little piece for our church newsletter that bears repeating. It helps to explain why our churches use the historic liturgy, instead of making stuff up as we go along. The reasoning is borne out, in my opinion, by a certain experiment conducted in the subway of Washington D.C. If we were to move away from the historic liturgy, then we ourselves stand to be the biggest losers.
While I would be very happy if the convention adopted a resolution like the previous sample memorial, realism/pessimism sets in early. Is the ELS capable of anything resembling sorrow over anything it’s done? Can it possibly show the public humility required to admit that its own doctrinal statements are not holy scripture? We’ll see. Or at least, someone will see. (“We” may not all be around by that time.) Or maybe the Lord will return before then, rendering all of the plans within plans utterly irrelevant. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
I’ll do some gardening in the meantime. The soil is tilled, and the next seed is a badly-needed resolution. As it is now, the synod bylaws (Chapter 2) require an action by the synod convention to receive a congregation as a member of the synod. Similarly, they require an action by the synod, without using the word “convention,” to receive an individual as a member. There is no similar requirement when a membership is terminated, be it the membership of a congregation or an individual.
Compare that to the membership of your congregation. Certainly the procedure varies. But in nearly all cases, I would venture to guess that the church’s duly installed representatives (Voters, Council, etc.) have to approve membership changes. That’s only half true for the synod.
Continue reading “Another Possible Memorial: Membership Changes”
Consider this quotation I found in Christian News (which I don’t generally read through, so I’m glad this caught my eye) from Rev. Daniel Preus about the “A Statement” or “Statement of the 44,” which was issued in the LCMS of 1945:
Completely apart from the issues involved, the fact that a statement of faith and conviction which had been made and mailed to all LCMS clergy and was contrary to official church doctrine and practice was simply withdrawn from discussion without retraction was a very bright green light to those who wished to see Missouri embrace a more open fellowship practice. But the implications do not end there. When people were permitted to publish a position statement contrary to our doctrine, and were not disciplined or required to retract, it became apparent that people would be able to publish or set forth other statements contrary to our doctrine. To many who believed Missouri too rigid, the 44 became a heroic example of a new permissiveness which would slowly invade the synod and lead eventually to the deplorable positions held by the St. Louis Seminary faculty majority in the early 1970s…. The fact remains that these men were able to flaunt the doctrinal practice of the church body to which they belonged with no significant consequences…
(Quoted from the 1999 paper The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod: Holiday from History.)
This is possibly an eye-opening revelation of the thought process behind the suspension of Pastor Rolf Preus from the ELS. It could be that the decision was based upon the notion that Preus’ paper “Clarifying the Issues” was equivalent to the “Statement of the 44.”
Let’s consider the merit of that notion. Do you think that the quote from Daniel Preus above speaks to the suspension of his brother, Rolf Preus? I don’t, and I’ll give you a reason right off the bat. First, a few supporting observations.
I wasn’t around in 1945. My grandfathers were still on their way back from the war. So maybe I don’t know what I’m writing about. If that’s the case, then please educate me.
The title of this article is a direct quotation from the synod announcement concerning the three churches and their pastors who have entered a state of confessional protest. See earlier posts for a description of this protest, and an analysis of the initial response.
I’m going to present the sequence of relevant events in a brief form, as I saw them occurring from my own point of view. I believe my point of view is the truth, or else it wouldn’t be my point of view. You may certainly disagree about that.
The first event relevant to this announcement was when Pastor Rolf Preus was given an ultimatum by the synod president: either recant/retract/withdraw your paper “Clarifying the Issues,” or you will be expelled from the synod. The showdown meeting began with the president asking that Pastor Preus retract his entire paper, as the only acceptable sign that he is not charging the synod with false doctrine. The request/demand was repeated throughout the meeting. Preus’ response was to ask for biblical proof that what he had written was wrong, for without such proof, he believed that his paper was correct and to retract it would be a sin. The meeting ended with no retraction, and no serious attempt to show from the Bible that the paper was wrong.
What brings churches together to form a synod? This is something that I’m sure everyone in the ELS would agree upon. It’s God’s Word. We agree on the doctrine, and this is the basis for our cooperation together. Without agreeing on the doctrine, we couldn’t have common missions, support a common seminary, or even figure out what our college should teach.
Because of this, the synod as a corporate body has an interest in preserving that unity of doctrine. So one of the tasks of the synod president, and other synod officials, is to help preserve it. How? The same way pastors work in the parish: by speaking and writing God’s Word. Pastors and synod officials do this publicly because they have been authorized to do it publicly, each shepherd to his own sheep in the proper context. The authorization may come in a variety of ways, but that’s how they have that authority.
Yet the authority of God’s Word is independent of the authority that pastors or synod officials have. God’s Word has it’s own authority. If pastors or synod officials speak what is not God’s Word, then their words do not have God’s authority. Yet if a layman speaks God’s Word to his pastor or to a synod official, then it must be heeded as God’s Word. To do otherwise is sinful. (cf. the Third Commandment)
What else can pastors and synod officials do to help preserve our unity in God’s Word? Individually, they can do nothing else.
Someone may say, “What about Matthew 18?” I say: the first steps of church discipline are indeed done by individuals, but they are still nothing but speaking God’s Word. The last step, excommunication, is a corporate speaking of God’s Word. It’s also not the same thing as removing (or suspending) someone from membership.
How is membership established? Corporately, mutually, and voluntarily. How is it terminated? Corporately, and when all is well, mutually and voluntarily. Neither establishing membership nor terminating membership is required by God’s Word. Neither one may be enacted by an individual. Membership is not identical with fellowship, though fellowship in doctrine is a prerequisite for membership. To combine the authority of speaking God’s Word together with the power to terminate membership unilaterally, either in the office of a parish pastor or synod president is contrary to God’s Word. It makes a ruler out of one who only has the authority to speak God’s Word. It confuses the ministry of the Gospel with the administration of temporal matters.
Synod has a churchly character, but what sort of churchly character is it? At this point, I’ve concluded (with help) that the synod exists as the cooperative efforts of its member churches to do certain things. I strongly suspect that it’s the nature of these efforts that lends the synod its whole churchly character, and not any independent characteristics that the synod may have.
But once I start something, I almost always do my best to finish it. So let’s finish our exploration of contrasts between the churchly character of synod and that of congregations, as touching their use of the means of grace, and as touching their context.
I was going to address how synod and congregation differ regarding their use of the means of grace and regarding their context, but we need to finish something else first, namely, how they differ regarding their shepherds.
Based upon feedback, I need to clarify something. I appreciate the thoughtful email responses I receive to these posts, but since they are private communications, I don’t think I should publish who the sender is. He wanted to explain what the Treatise says in association with AC XVIII, in response to what I wrote here:
So if presiding is pastoral ministry, then the president must be a shepherd to someone else. Is it the pastors of the synod or missionaries? No, because a formal relationship like that would violate Treatise paragraphs 7 and following, with the accompanying scriptural passages.
My email responder distinguishes the authority to set up the synod president as the pastors’ pastor from his authority to act as the minister of the synod’s pastors. The first authority is acknowledged to be done by human right, and the latter by divine right. This distinction echoes what’s written in the PMW: “But it is by divine right that one exercises that work on behalf of the Christians through whom the call has come.” (That’s written about the wider sense of “public ministry.”) By making this distinction, it is supposed that having a synod president as the pastors’ pastor does not violate Treatise 7ff, because we have a synod president by human right. But when he “supervises” his “flock” by teaching them (that is, correcting their doctrine, and presumably suspending those who disagree with what he teaches), he does this by divine right.
I apologize for not providing any earth-shaking conclusions in the last post. My conclusion about the office of synod president: “It depends.” Probably not satisfying to most readers. But if two out of the three of you can accept it, we’ll move on.
I actually received an email from a reader about this post. I won’t divulge the author without permission, but he made a good point. My question, “Just what and where is the synod?” was unfair in presenting only those two, briefly stated alternatives. In fact, it looks a lot like a false dilemma, though he was too polite to write that out loud.
After thinking a bit about this email response while working on various parts of our house this New Year’s Day, I have concluded that the question deserves a lot more attention: Just what and where is the synod?
As the fit takes me, I’m going to include an explanation of my view on various part of the PMW document from time to time. “PMW” is shorthand for [the newest doctrinal statement][pmw] of the ELS, now a mere 18 months into adoption. It’s fair to say that this document is still mostly untested in “real life.” Sure, we’ve argued about the doctrine for a long time, and sure, a majority of delegates voted for it 18 months ago, but neither of those facts can be called a test of the doctrinal statement.
Unless, maybe, you’re talking about the part that touches upon the authority of a synod president. That is still in the midst of a serious test, pertinent questions being:
[pmw]: http://www.evangelicallutheransynod.org/believe/els/publicministry Continue reading “A closer look at part of the PMW document”