# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S88
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

88 On Lay Elders or Congregation Presidents.

published. (See Luther's Works, Halle edition, vol. 10, p. 1148 ff.;
Erlangen edition, vol. 22, p. 105 ff.) This congregation board consisted
of 10 persons: 2 from the nobility, 2 from the council, 3 from the
citizenry, and 3 from the peasants (since several villages belonged to
the town parish as well); this board had, to be sure, chiefly to do with
the administration of the congregation's property, building matters, and
the pastor's salary, yet, besides other matters more concerned with the
inner governance of the congregation, even the power to call and remove
the teachers in the schools was given over to it, "according to the
counsel and good judgment of the elected pastor and a preacher and other
scholars of divine Scripture." The meetings of this board took place
every Sunday at the parsonage, in connection with the congregational
assemblies held three times during the year, to which the presbytery was
answerable in everything, and which, in the calling and removal of
preachers, wished to exercise their "Christian liberty in no other way
than to act, practice, and use it according to the setting forth and
ordinance of divine, biblical Scripture."

Another remarkable example of a presbytery in which laymen were
assessors, within the Lutheran church, is found in "Daniel Greher's
History and Description of His Life. Dresden, 1587." This Greher was
born in 1504 at Weilburg in the county of Nassau-Saarbrück, became a
Roman priest, but came to the knowledge of the truth, thereupon became
pastor at Gießen, and finally, on account of his widely known learning,
godliness, and zeal for the pure doctrine, was called by Duke Moritz of
Saxony to Dresden to administer the superintendency there. Greher
administered this office not only with great zeal and blessing, but also
worked, especially at many church conventions, for the church as a whole
with blessed success, and finally died at an advanced age in the year
1591. He also stood in such high honor with Elector August that the
latter chose him as godfather at the baptism of one of his princes in
the year 1569, and thereafter always addressed him, both by word and in
writing, as nothing other than "Herr Gevatter" (my good godfather).
Nicolaus Selnecker was his son-in-law. This Greher writes in his
aforementioned autobiography:

"Since I was pastor at Gießen, I helped devise, at Ziegenheim, a Formam
Excommunicationis and how to set up a church council, etc. By order of
Landgrave Philipp of Hesse I set up the Senatum ecclesiasticum according
to this order, and had the whole Christian congregation choose the
Senatum per suffragia (by vote), and so 8 persons — old, honest, godly,
and valiant men — were chosen, who according to their conscience were to
attend to this office with earnestness and diligence, which they then
promised faithfully to do. I thereupon came to an agreement with the
church council that we would come together at the parsonage every 4
weeks, on a certain day, which was called the day of prayer; and on this
day of prayer the litany was, in the church, before the altar, itself