# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S354
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 354 —

The further proposal, that a fellow pastor be brought in where
necessary for visitations, was likewise adopted; and finally the
remaining proposals concerning the procedure for visitations were
modified so that, with reference to the instruction for the office of
visitation already present in the first synodical report [Synodalbericht]
of 1847, p. 10, the district presidents are charged with drawing up
"a collection of hints and counsel, not so much for the general
president as rather for the office of visitation in general."

The Formation of English Congregations out of German Mother
Congregations.

The Synod also had before it the question: "What measures could and
should the Synod take, should the need arise to found English
congregations?" Professor Biewend, at the general president's
request, had prepared a thorough paper [Referat] on this subject, which
was read to the Synod and then discussed part by part. After long and
wide-ranging discussion, the Synod agreed on the following resolution:

We are, to be sure, far from wishing to give any encouragement to the
rapid inroads of English into our congregations; rather, we wish to
have exhorted German Lutheran parents to provide their children, by
every means available to them — such as sending them to the German
parish school and using the German language within the family — with
a sufficient knowledge of our precious mother tongue, so that they may
thereby be enabled to share in it in the blessing of the Word as it is
offered both in preaching and in the devotional and edifying writings
of our Church. Nevertheless, we hold it our sacred duty to found
English congregations as soon as it becomes clear that a number
sufficient to form a congregation exists which understands English
better than German — and understands English better to such a degree
that the lack of knowledge of the German language would, if not rob
them entirely, then at least diminish for them the blessing of the
preached divine Word.

Among the necessary conditions, however, under which an orthodox
[rechtgläubig] German Evangelical Lutheran congregation may release
such of its existing members as it has for the purpose of their being
received into an English Lutheran congregation being organized, the
following in particular belong:

1. The pastor of the German congregation must be granted such a role
in the call of the English Lutheran preacher that the call gains its
validity only through the former's confirmation, so that, by releasing
those entrusted to him, he does not thereby breach his responsibility
for them;

2. In the constitution of the English congregation being organized,
all the confessional writings of our Church must be declared to be the
congregation's confession of faith and doctrine;

3. That constitution must be submitted to the German pastor for
examination according to God's Word and the Church's confession, and
must be recognized by him, respectively, as orthodox;

4. The English congregation may claim no right to the property of the
German congregation it leaves, nor to the joint use of the latter's
church and school buildings; the German congregation should, however,
where the need of the English congregation calls for it, be
Christianly willing to support it through gifts of love.