# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1857_S230
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

230   How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Brought Up?

Here, then, the subject would now be the conduct, conformable to the Gospel, of a servant of the Lutheran Church in the representative congregational assemblies — by which, in the wider sense, is to be understood the assembly of the adult, judgment-capable, male members of the congregation, who also represent the evangelical rights of the children and of the female members, including of course the pastor as representative of the churchly office of teaching; but in the narrower sense, besides the pastor, a larger or smaller committee drawn from the body of hearers, presupposing that the above-mentioned members of the congregation have transferred to it — whether it be called, with the pastor included, church council, or presbytery, or church board, church vestry, and the like — certain rights, originally and essentially belonging to them and to the whole congregation, for public administration.

But before we proceed to that, the situation of our church with regard to what has just been mentioned leads us to a new question, which we must first settle. First, that is, it would have to be asked: "Is it conformable to the Gospel, and wholesomely and wisely done, when a Lutheran congregation here simply transfers to some committee from its own midst its good right, grounded in the Gospel, to govern itself according to God's Word?" And then: "Is it conformable to the Gospel that, in the case of such transfer and representation, this should take place through the so-called three estates, the teaching estate, the sustaining estate, and the defending estate?"

Now as regards that first question, an affirmative answer to it could hardly be given from the evangelical standpoint; and that for the following reasons:

First, namely, it is thoroughly in keeping with the New Testament evangelical character of the congregation that whatever concerns the whole congregation (the word "congregation" being understood not in contrast to the churchly office of teaching, but as including it) and its common welfare should also come before the representative congregation (in that wider sense given above).

But to this belongs not only the calling of the shepherd and teacher, but also, after this has taken place and the office of preaching has thereby been established or maintained, for example the arrangement or alteration of the service of worship, the setting up or improvement of a parish school, the exercise of church discipline, the drafting of a congregational constitution suited to the present circumstances of the congregation, and the like.

How foolishly, and how much to its own impoverishment, a Lutheran congregation here would act if it transferred all this to the pastor and his assistants, that is, to the congregational board, to order and to administer, is easy to see. For although the divine Word, in exposition conformable to the Confessions, from the mouth of the servant of the church, is what first sheds the right light on the matters just named and on the further items of congregational life mentioned above, with respect to their nature and their realization, it is nevertheless thoroughly more conformable to the evangelical character of the New Testament that this