# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1858_S154
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

154 Form of a Constitution for an English-Lutheran Congregation.

b. Acknowledges all the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments as
the only divine rule and standard of faith and life; and

c. While he may perhaps be yet deficient in the knowledge of the collective
Symbolical Books before named, at least knows and acknowledges the Augsburg
Confession and Luther's Smaller Catechism;

d. Does not live in manifest works of the flesh, (Gal. 5, 19—21.) but maintains
a christian deportment;

e. Receives with the congregation the Lord's Supper as frequently as practic-
able, when of adult age;

f. Submits to the church regulations which have been established by mutual
consent, or which may yet be established, provided they are not contrary to the
word of God, and permits himself to be, in brotherly love, corrected, when he has
erred.

Sect. 5. The right of suffrage shall belong only to those male church members
who have arrived at the age of 21, and who have subscribed these church regula-
tions; and only those shall be eligible to office who have attained to the age of 25,
and have been members of the congregation already one year.

Sect. 6. Every member of the congregation is to contribute according to
ability.

a. To the support of the preaching or the Gospel and administration of the
Sacraments;

b. To the liquidation of all congregational debts;

c. If any neglect to contribute for the space of —— without excusing him-
self on account of inability, he is to be admonished in a brotherly manner by a
church warden.

Sect. 7. If any member of the congregation shall, after a fruitless application
of the several grades of admonition, (Matt. 28, 15—20.) be excluded from the
congregation, he shall thereby lose all the rights of a member, and all right to the
property of the congregation as such so long as he is not again received into the
congregation.

The same shall also hold good in reference to those who voluntarily withdraw
from connection with the congregation, or who bring about this withdrawal by
removing away, if they thereby annul their connection with the congregation.

Sect. 8. The office of Pastor in this congregation can be committed to such
a minister only who acknowledges all the canonical books of the Old and New
Testaments as the revealed word of God, and the collective symbolical books of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as drawn from the word of God, and named in
Sect. 3, to which he is to bind himself in accepting the call.

Sect. 9. The congregation, as a body, has the highest power in the manage-
ment of all the internal and external ecclesiastical and congregational affairs; no
arrangement or decision for the congregation, or for a church member as such, has
any validity, whether it proceed from an individual or from a body in the congre-
gation, if it is not made in the name of and according to the general or particular
authority given by the congregation; and that which is arranged or decided by
individuals or smaller bodies in the name and by the authority of the congregation,
may at any time be brought before the congregation, as the highest tribunal, for
final decision. Nevertheless, the congregation has no right to arrange or decide any
thing contrary to the word of God and the symbols of the pure Evangelical Lutheran
Church; should she do this, all such arrangements and decisions are null and void.

Sect. 10. The right to call, to elect, and to receive the minister, or ministers,
and all other officers of this congregation, shall always belong to the congregation