# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1850_S141
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 141 —

to them in the East; the costs are too great, the visitors lack
the time for such lengthy journeys. Yet a visitation would bind their
congregations to the Synod even more than outward support itself.
A conference furnished with special privileges would, moreover, entirely
answer their wish; the Synod therefore wishes to grant them the following
arrangements:

1. that the moderator of the conference receive authority to hold a
visitation through the congregations of the district at fixed
times, on which he must then render account to the Synod or
its president.

2. that the moderator receive the right to examine and ordain
arriving candidates who have been called by congregations there,
with the participation of the conference's preachers.

3. that two men, a preacher and a delegate of the congregations,
shall be their representatives at the Synod.

They further wish to draw selected congregation members into their
conferences and to hold the conferences themselves in public, subject to the
necessary ministerial conferences. — The moderator shall in this case be
the intermediary for the conference members, through whom decisions from
the conference in doubtful cases of pastoral care, etc., can be
obtained at any time; he shall also be the intermediary through whom the
Synod may deal with the conference members — a circumstance
that would make the course of business far more orderly and thus
considerably easier. In this way they hope, through their own closer
association with the main body of the Synod, which unfortunately lies so
far from them, to enter into a closer connection, to gain a center
for their isolated and scattered situation, and thus to be able more
effectively to contribute their part to the edification of the whole.

For the rest, may the Synod, in determining the privileges of their
conference, preserve its own rights as it deems necessary.

Resolution of the Synod on the foregoing: For the reasons
given, the conference's wish shall be granted to this extent, that a further
vice-president for the eastern district be appointed, who, elected by the
Synod, shall serve as its second vice-president and shall take on the
obligation, for the preservation of unity, to attend each
synodical assembly. —

Private Confession.

The congregation at Frohna, where private confession is the exclusive
practice, had its delegate request a ruling from the Synod on
whether the older members of the congregation are obligated, to please
members who joined the congregation only later, to consent
to private confession being abolished altogether, or at least to having
general confession introduced alongside it and granted equal standing
with it. It received the answer that the Synod could not
advise it to change the good old order existing among it
and, to please the younger or newly joining members, to introduce general
confession alongside private confession and grant the former equal
standing with the latter. For Scripture requires: "Submit yourselves one
to another in the fear of God; where a good order exists in a congregation,
the newly joining members are therefore obligated to submit