# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S78
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 78 —

4. They request the General Synod to take this matter under
deliberation and to furnish them with an opinion.

The committee proposes to declare:

that the accusations raised against Pastors Fürbringer, Wagner,
Lochner, and the Northern District synod are, so far as they could be
examined without confrontation (a direct confrontation of the
contending parties), groundless,

and that the General Synod concur in the District synod's ruling in
this dispute.

This report was adopted by the synod, and the secretary was
instructed, once it was put into proper form, to send it as the
synod's answer to the 15 signers.

6. Pastor Groß, on behalf of the Eastern District synod, had
submitted to the General Synod the question: whether a teacher may
be received as an advisory member of synod if he has taken a school
position at a congregation belonging to another, specifically
false-believing, synod. Since the question had been prompted by a
particular case that had arisen, the synod had that case reported to
it and issued the following opinion on the matter before it: since
it appears from the testimony given that the teacher in question,
namely Mr. Teacher Knoche in New York, had taken over the school
under the express condition that he might conduct religious
instruction entirely according to the Lutheran catechism and
instruct the children in Lutheran doctrine generally; that Teacher
Knoche also otherwise stands in no kind of church fellowship with
either the congregation or the false-believing synod, but rather
makes use of Word and Sacrament within our synod — the synod must
therefore rule that Teacher Knoche, in his school, serves the
Lutheran church, respectively our synod, and may therefore remain an
advisory member within our body.

7. Pastor Schmidt of Baltimore had submitted an inquiry concerning
the formation of English congregations, worded as follows: "What
principles and measures should govern the release of members of a
German congregation to an English congregation of the same pure
confession in the same place?" Since Pastor Schmidt, in the oral
explanation of his question, indicated that he differed with the
decision already given on this point by the General Synod in 1857,
a lengthy and lively discussion ensued, in which it became clear to
the synod that it could not do otherwise than firmly adhere to the
decision already given (see Synodal-Bericht 1857, p. 51). Pastor
Schmidt, who could not be persuaded, was asked not to close the
matter at once but to confer privately, both orally and in writing,
with fellow ministers.

8. A motion submitted by the electoral college to change the
constitutional provisions on the mode of election for teachers at
our institutions was discussed at length; after a long debate,
however, it was resolved to table it.