# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1969_S102
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

102 CHURCH RELATIONS

Synod immediately and unanimously declare itself in
full, practicing altar and pulpit fellowship with The
American Lutheran Church; and be it further

Resolved, That the assembled delegates at this con-
vention along with the congregations they represent
lend their highest effort toward living in this fellowship
in fraternity and good order and working for a unified
evangelical position and practice among us.

REDEEMER LUTHERAN CHURCH
Hinsdale, II.

Curtis HoLMSTEN, Secretary
GeorcE Hampe, Chairman

(3-30)

To Declare Fellowship and to Resist
Polarization

With respect to the New York (1967) convention of
Synod and its Resolution 3-23, “To Take Steps Toward
Declaration of Altar and Pulpit Fellowship with The
American Lutheran Church,” further action on which
is to be considered by the Synod in its Denver conven-
tion, July 1969, Immanuel Lutheran Church in Valpa-
raiso, Ind., invites its concerned brethren everywhere
to consider the following:

1. It is a profoundly significant reality for which we
ought continually to thank and praise our God that The
Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod and The American
Lutheran Church both take their stand on and bind
their pastors and teachers to the Holy Scriptures and
the historic Lutheran Confessions.

2. The essays adopted by the commissioners of The
ALC and the LCMS in 1964 and 1965, together with the
“Joint Statement and Declaration” to which our New
York convention responded in 1967, are excellent state-
ments and ought to be taken most seriously by our
church, the more so since they recall three decades
of prior conversations and are the product of our own
Synod’s invitation to The American Lutheran Church
(as newly constituted in 1960) to participate in further
consultations with a view toward establishing pulpit and
altar fellowship.

3. We share the concern of many over what appears
to be inconsistency and sometimes laxity in teaching
and practice, both in The American Lutheran Church
and in our own Synod. We are increasingly wary, how-
ever, of any tendency to classify every such tension
into polarities called “liberal” and “conservative.” The
label liberal is understood by many to imply necessary
disloyalty to the Lutheran Confessions, and conserva-
tive to imply loyalty. Such labeling is often unjust,
misleading, and divisive. It tends to prejudice and beg
the very issues on which brethren united under one
Gospel need to find understanding and encouragement
as well as criticism from one another. We are certain
that any assumption of a schism between what appears
to be conservative and liberal polarities without a de-
termined, brotherly, responsible, and mutual evaluation
of what each is trying to say will in the end not pre-

serve the truth of the Gospel and sharpen our witness
but dissipate, shrink, and dull it. Far from being struck
to the heart by our message, the world will become the
more able to dismiss and ignore our Gospel as out-
moded superstition or to give it superficial consent
without experiencing its offense and its glory.

4. We plead with our brethren, therefore, to consider
whether the internal tensions in our respective bodies,
or statistical computations of the proportion of “liberal”
over against “conservative” thinking, difficult as such
questions are, should have any decisive relevance in
the matter of fellowship, which is now before us. We
think it should not, for the following reasons:

a. For all such internal tensions as we continue to
experience them, it ought to be a ground of common
and overriding joy and hope in the Lord that all of us
in the Missouri Synod and in The American Lutheran
Church, whether we might be labeled as conservative
or liberal or somewhere in between — all of us continue
to claim the same Holy Scriptures as our own and to
pledge our loyalty to the same Lutheran Confessions.

b. It seems incumbent on us as brethren, therefore,
to honor and believe one another, and to accept at face
value the sincerity and integrity of a brother's profes-
sion, even when some formulation or action of his seems
to us to be inconsistent with his confessional subscrip-
tion — and thus to put the best construction on every-
thing. For only as we trust one another can we listen
to one another or learn to understand the situation to
which a brother feels bound to respond as he does. But
if we find it simpler to judge a brother than to be
a brother to him, we may be guilty of rejecting gifts
the Lord of the church is giving to one member for the
edification of the whole body, or of irresponsible inde-
pendence, as though the fears and cautions of the
brother who questions us could teach us nothing.

c. We believe that our common stand on the Holy
Scriptures and Confessions can and will be a great force
for healing, if only we will take that stand of ours seri-
ously enough to use it and build on it. We believe that
Christ, our one Lord, knows our trials and will not
forsake us, that He wants none to be lost. A strategy
of suspicion, protest, and separation, with standards of
judgment set by one side only in any dispute, is a denial
of His mercy and power, and will destroy any lively
possibility that we may contribute to one another and
thus grow in maturity and love as one body in Christ.
speaking with one mouth to the world that so needs and
yet despises our Gospel.

5. It would be a grave tragedy, therefore, and a de-
nial of our freedom in the Spirit and of our confidence
in our one Head, Jesus Christ, if the Missouri Synod
were now to withdraw again the hand of fellowship it
began to extend to The American Lutheran Church
2 years ago. We extended that hand as an expression
of joy in the unity of our confessional subscription. We
would be withdrawing our hand only because we have
turned our attention away from that conlessional unity
and been overwhelmed again with fear at the specter