# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   27

such wishes are raised, meeting them need not be put off for three
years.

At its last meeting the Middle District decided to abolish
entirely, within its territory, the aid society for widows and orphans of
pastors and teachers that, despite all the explanations given, has
remained unpopular. All the congregations have shown themselves
willing to make this matter fully their own and thus a district matter.
The same has been resolved regarding support for old and sick pastors
and teachers, though with the explicit declaration that the district still
considers itself obligated, as before, and ready, should the occasion
arise, to help other districts as well in supporting their needy members.
A petition from the Michigan District likewise aims at a similar goal —
namely, making support of every kind primarily a district matter — and
I will hand this, together with a proposal for introducing a better system
for cases of larger and more general disasters, over to a committee for
review and report.

There are five cases of appeals on which information is to be given
here. Two of these were already before the previous synod. In the
matter of Mr. Kupferschläger (see page 84 of the last report), the
appointed committee — Pastors König and Hochstetter — reported at
the time that, upon the renewed public investigation that was
undertaken, the man in question had shown himself, both to the
witnesses present and to the committee, to be "a person given to lying
and unrepentant," who had "rightly been placed under the ban." —
Regarding Mr. Lindemann (p. 84), Pastors Rolf and Sievers, who had
been charged with negotiating with him in person, unfortunately also
had to report that their efforts had been wasted and that Lindemann had
shown himself to be "a thoroughly malicious, arrogant, and dishonest
man." With that, by the Synod's resolution, this matter too would have
been settled, as the committee also declared on the spot. Nevertheless,
Lindemann has once again sent me an appeal to the General Synod. It
will therefore probably not be superfluous to have a committee
investigate and report whether, in this case as in the previous one,
everything is really in order. — The third appeal, that of Mr. D.
Denke-Walther against the decision of the Middle District, was settled
by me on the spot with the assistance of Pastor Jüngel Sr. and Pastor
C. C. Schmidt. Although it became entirely clear there, too, that the
pastor and congregation had acted, in excluding the man in question,
wholly according to Christian order, he nevertheless persisted in his
unproven, spiteful accusations. — A fourth case is that of Mr. Lehnigk,
a teacher. He had indeed, with his appeal from the decision of the
Wisconsin District's commission,