# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1848_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...had expected, and that among these too there was for the most part still
great indifference toward their own doctrine and church, while the
majority of the German immigrants consisted of Catholics, United
[Church] members, and Methodists. Yet he often had opportunity to
converse with individual and several of our fellow believers, and [found]
the desire to be served with Word and Sacrament by a Lutheran preacher.
He also preached in various places on request and baptized several
children, and altogether, through instruction and exhortation, certainly
left a wholesome impression on many a heart. In particular, however, he
showed commendable zeal in carefully inquiring into the church
circumstances of the inhabitants of those regions and in diligently
gathering notes about them.

The committee proposes in its report to the synod that Pastor C. Fricke,
should the synod send him out again as a visitor, be allowed to spend
more than two months on these visitation journeys, provided his own
office can meanwhile be filled by one of the neighboring preachers;
further, that on future visitation journeys the state of Missouri also be
kept in view; and finally, that the visitor go out in the character of a
missionary, so that he may stay longer in the individual settlements and
promptly found congregations.

The question of whether the synod has the right to formally call a
preacher for the purpose of seeking out the scattered Lutherans of this
country and serving them with Word and Sacrament became the subject
of long and many-sided discussion. While some claimed this right for the
synod, others pointed out that the call to the preaching office among
those already baptized confers the authority to exercise, in the public
office, the rights of the spiritual priesthood belonging to the hearers
[congregation]; that therefore only the hearers concerned — either
themselves or through persons specially commissioned by them — could
give a valid call to administer the office among them; a visitor could
therefore regard himself as called to work among the scattered,
abandoned Lutherans only insofar as the commandment of love of
neighbor and brother, and the synod's charge to help fulfill this duty
likewise incumbent on it in their stead, gave him a calling to do so.

The synod later asked Pastor Bünger of St. Louis to take on the duties of
a visitor, and recommended that he make Cincinnati his chief focus.

So that the otherwise widely scattered Lutherans of this country,
particularly in the western settlements, might also be sought out, the
synod for this purpose appointed Pastor Ernst as a second visitor and
recommended that he direct his attention especially to the states of
Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa.

Conference Reports.

The committee to whom the reports of the Monroe and Fort Wayne
preachers' conferences had been given for examination and reporting
communicated to the synod the result of its work.

Regarding the Monroe conference report, the committee complains of its
lack of clarity and its deficiencies.

As far as can be gathered from the minutes (the committee continues), a
great falling-away has broken out in the congregations there, and the
deliberations concern how the congregation is to proceed when...