# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the 25th General, or

...common practice of the wholesome doctrine revealed in Holy Scripture is,
by God's grace, preserved among us in right Christian unity, and the harms
that arise — I have noticed some of these at the district meetings too —
are continually held down and removed. Right practice of doctrine at
synodical meetings requires that we — following the example of our fathers
— always strive for simplicity and clarity and carefully avoid all learned
artifice. Learned artifice belongs neither in the pulpit nor in the
doctrinal discussions at synods. Rather, let us exercise ourselves
unceasingly in the admittedly difficult spiritual art of so treating
doctrine before the Christian people that — to speak with Luther — Hans and
Grete [the ordinary man and woman] understand us.

Our Mission Work.

Three years ago the Synod made it a special duty of the General President
to become acquainted, at the district meetings, with the work in the field
of Home Missions. I have endeavored to carry out this charge. It was the
more important to me to become better acquainted, from the reports of the
mission commissions and the oral reports of the missionaries, with the
nature of the work and its peculiar difficulties, since the greater part of
our candidates must first enter into this work. Precisely our so-called
traveling preachers [*Reiseprediger*] must be men well grounded in right
doctrine, since in most places they have to contend with lodges, Roman
Catholics, sects, and false Lutherans. The number of pastors performing
traveling-preacher service currently amounts to about 324, who served 778
places in the past year. Raised in the past year (1901) for Home Missions —
not counting Brazil — was $85,108.42. For the first time in very many
years, the General Commission for Home Missions was able, at the beginning
of this year, to pay out in full the entire sum requested by the districts
that cannot bear the costs of their own home missions. May this state of
affairs continue! One disturbance in the work of Home Missions, noted at
several district synods and by some district presidents, was the
circumstance that traveling preachers were not infrequently called away
from their mission work, after quite a short time, to older congregations.
We can guard against this ill only by having consciences continually
sharpened from God's Word regarding matters of the call [*Berufssachen*].
Calling congregations, as well as pastors and their relatives and friends,
must always keep in mind that matters of the call are God's affairs, and
that any self-seeking conduct in matters of the call is an encroachment on
Christ's government. Further, in this chapter on Home Missions we must not
forget that traveling preaching is, and is meant to be, only a provisional
arrangement. If I am not mistaken, it was the late Wyneken who called a
traveling preacher...