# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S176
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised?

Now where, for further instruction, these correct evangelical views of congregational worship are laid as the foundation, there it will also soon be possible, out of a shared conviction and by a joint resolution of the teacher and his hearers, to arrive at a sound form of public worship, in which, in the acts of the liturgist — precisely as the mouth of the congregation toward God — at least the chief parts are present, so that an orthodox congregation of Christ manifests itself therein in its confessing, praising and giving thanks, praying and supplicating, asking and interceding, even should it not yet have been possible to attain the completeness and richer furnishing of an older Lutheran liturgy; for the essence of a truly Lutheran congregation never, and nowhere, consists in this, that the full ritual from the older and better age of the Lutheran Church be present; this essence is present wherever the Word of God is taught purely and truly and the Sacraments are administered according to the Gospel, even should, say, only the Lord's Prayer be prayed and the Creed be sung. Conversely, this essence would not be present, even amid the fullest Lutheran liturgy (of which, admittedly, the fewest understand anything, and most, after the Roman fashion, know not what they do), if, for example, false doctrine concerning the Church and the preaching office were to sound from the pulpit.

It should, moreover, not be denied here that the Lutheran pastor, in this case in question, although he for the present contents himself with a sound though meager form of worship, should not for that reason fail to keep a liturgical goal in view, and, according to the measure of his congregation's growing understanding, godliness, and churchly formation, in agreement with it, take approximating steps toward this goal — partly for the sake of the congregation itself, according to Philippians 4:8, partly in order also in this respect to arrive at a lovely unity and a commendable uniformity with the older Lutheran congregations, for example those of the same synod.

Now whether these steps — here toward a sound and fuller Lutheran liturgy, so above toward a similar Lutheran congregational order — occur only gradually and slowly, they will nevertheless be firm and sure steps, which the pastor takes together with the congregation, in that he drives it forward, for every step, not by presumed pastoral decrees of authority, but prepares it through fitting and timely instruction and the understanding and conviction thereby worked in it, while the step itself takes place through the harmonious cooperation of the teaching office and the hearers and through a joint resolution. And by such an evangelical procedure a twofold ill is guarded against and a twofold benefit obtained. First, namely, the Lutheran pastor will thereby guard his own conscience, that he not fall, out of personal private predilection for this or that form of liturgy and constitution, into a merely human contrivance and forcing of the issue, from which it can scarcely proceed without a good deal of insincerity and injury to conscience, in that