# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1887_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 Proceedings of the 20th General or

Examination of Outside Candidates for the Teaching Office.

By resolution of the last Delegate Synod, Prof. Günther had been
charged "to examine whether it could not be reconciled with the
Constitution of our Synod — specifically with the paragraph of it dealing
with the examination or testing of 'those who wish to become candidates
for the teaching office, or are to be assigned to a teaching position' — to
have it hold that, just as for our own seminary students, so also for
these, whether they obtained their training in Germany or acquired
their qualification for the office of schoolteacher elsewhere, outside our
Seminary, the Board of Examiners of the Teachers' Seminary at Addison
is the properly competent examining authority, so that the pastor
concerned would examine only once he has been charged to do so by the
former."

"This question" — so runs Prof. Günther's opinion on the matter —
"I have repeatedly weighed, and have arrived at the following result:

"The Constitution was drafted and adopted at a time when the Synod
had as yet no Teachers' Seminary, indeed nowhere yet any institution at
all. This explains the provision of the paragraph named, which assigns
the examination of candidates for the teaching office to the local pastor
concerned. The Synod, however, reserved to itself the oversight of the
examination. Under Chap. IV, B, the business of the General Synod also
includes: 'the examination of those who in one of the Districts seek . . .
admission into the synodical fellowship,' and under Chap. IV, C, 'the
examination of its candidates for the teaching office.' And Chap. V, A,
§ 2 states: 'Should schoolteachers . . . apply for admission into the
Synod who until then were not members of recognized orthodox
ecclesiastical bodies, they must, before their admission, submit to a
colloquium held before the Synod together with the Board of Examiners
or its appointed substitutes.'

"The Constitution there speaks only of one Board of Examiners, which
is also to hold a colloquium with candidates for the teaching office who
come from outside. At the time when the Synod still had no institution
of its own, President C. F. W. Walther, Pastor Löber (in Altenburg), and
Pastor Sihler were the members of the Board of Examiners. In 1850 the
following were appointed permanent members of the Board of
Examiners: the respective presidents of the two Seminaries and the
respective President of the District. After the Synod's division into
Districts, in 1854, two Boards of Examiners were appointed, one for the
Western District and one for the Central District. The second was not
abolished until 1864. In that year a Board of Examiners was appointed
for the Teachers' Seminary. — The Synod has thus, over time, distributed
among several bodies the functions of the single Board of Examiners
called for in the Constitution.