# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 25 —

"No less is this contradiction present when a Lutheran synod or a composite synodical body tolerates that individual pastors of its own, who also call themselves Lutheran, serve congregations that are in fact Unionist."

Thesis 11.

"It further contradicts the Confession when the church body lets it be that its pastors have no regular but only a temporary call from their congregations, or even itself strengthens this disorder through the license system [*Licenzweſen*]."

Whoever administers the preaching office without having a regular call is no regular pastor. He does administer the office, but he does not have the ordered office. For what he does, a woman also does when she baptizes a child, and a cowherd when he absolves another. Of such pastors God says through the prophet Jeremiah in the 23rd chapter: "I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran." God speaks here in wrath of them: and yet, against my will, they have run. Then Paul says of the bishops: Christ has appointed them, — God has set in the congregation, etc. Whoever, therefore, is not set by God in the congregation is no regular preacher. A temporary call is therefore contrary to the divinity of the same. For such a preacher is hired and engaged by men like a servant, not set by God through the congregation, until it pleases it to take the preacher from it again. Therefore one does not interfere with the office of such a temporarily called preacher when one interferes in his congregation, because he does not have the office at all, although according to circumstances one may not be acting rightly thereby. Hence no Lutheran synod should receive such a temporarily called preacher, for the temporary call stands in contradiction to the obedience which God commands the congregation in the words of Hebrews 13:17: "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you." For as soon as a temporarily called pastor warns his congregation of sins and rebukes, but this does not please it, it can point to the call and say: Your time is now up. A temporary call further contradicts also the fact that a preacher is to be faithful in his congregation unto death. For such a one must say: I am faithful to you only until the 1st of January, then it is over. Of course this faithfulness is not violated when God himself calls away. Finally the temporary call is also against the practice of our Church of all times.

In the year 1532 the people of Zwickau wanted to dismiss their preacher Cordatus because of his sermons of rebuke. They thought, if they could call, so