# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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ments very difficult, and when unwelcome sermons of rebuke come, they appeal again to their constitution. What good is it then to the preacher if he says: I did not pledge myself to it at all! The congregation will answer: But we have done it. Therefore let no preacher lead another into temptation when, in giving advice to be sought, he says: Just go there, you can change that later. 

In this matter the preachers who have to direct such a calling can prevent much harm. They should communicate such conditions to the person called in the letter accompanying the call. Then let the person called deal with the congregation. If it says: Then we can never get rid of our preacher! one answers: Dear people, there is no danger of that! According to God's Word you can send your pastor away at any moment if he teaches falsely, or lives offensively, or wilfully is unfaithful in his office. If the congregation says: But times may also come when we cannot bear you any longer, but because these three things are not present we must keep you. Of course one cannot then grant the congregation the right to drive the preacher away, but it can get rid of him at once. If it will not have him at all, then the Savior says to his servant: Shake off the dust from your feet also.

Here it is now to be noted: no other preacher can accept a call to such a congregation. And if he had a thousand calls from such a congregation, he would still stand in the pulpit like the thief in my house who has murdered me. For that congregation belongs to me until God himself calls me elsewhere. If I was regularly called to that congregation, I can say with confidence: This pulpit is mine, and whoever goes into it without my will is a thief. The congregation can indeed have me removed by a policeman; it then only removes my body, but my right remains.

One must not be deceived by the fact that a preacher has made some mistake in the congregation in his zeal. That never happens to a lazy parson, who pleases everyone and says of a faithful preacher who goes too far in zeal: I would never do that. The congregation, however, is not to look at its preacher according to his weaknesses, but in faith according to his calling. The Apostles too made mistakes here and there, but Paul writes: "If we do too much, we do it to God." If, therefore, a congregation sees how the preacher pursues his office with earnestness and zeal and thinks of that great day of accounting when God will require every soul at his hand, it should gladly close an eye. Woe to it, however, if it drives him out; it has deposed Christ, it has driven out the truth of the Gospel. For Christ says, Luke 10:16: "He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me." Matt. 25:40: "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my