# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 32 —

are in it. They do not know, for example, which people of theirs may and can be married [*copulirt*], how to administer the sacraments, whom they are not to admit to the Holy Supper; they do not know how to distinguish Law and Gospel, nor how to give counsel in cases of conscience, and the like. They are a disgrace to our Church and only cause confusion in the congregations.

A synod that acknowledges such men as servants of Christ sins, for they do not preach what serves the salvation of souls, but what they have for Christian thoughts. They have never been in a theological school, have never heard how one is to serve a Christian congregation, but seek only the office in order to have bread, and the congregations accept them because they can chatter for a couple of hours in the pulpit. We often meet people who out of ignorance cannot understand how a pastor sits days over a sermon to bring it about. They think: He has studied to become a preacher, what has he then still to study now? But we do not learn at the universities all the sermons by heart that we shall later have to deliver in our whole life; rather we must work them out with great diligence, in order to offer the congregation each time what is most needful for it under its circumstances. A capable preacher will not take his sermon, say, word for word from a postil [book of model sermons], although he uses good postils in composing his sermon. For the more timely they were at the time and under the circumstances in which they were delivered, the less will they often correspond to our time and to our congregational circumstances. And yet uneducated preachers do a thousand times better if they learn a sermon of Luther's by heart word for word and deliver it, than if they bring their own twaddle to the congregation.

Such abuses have been brought about by the neglected conditions of American synods. One thinks: Well, he is surely also a pious man and will surely do something good, — whereas such pastors are for the most part wretched hypocrites who have acquired some phrases from the language of Canaan and now try to peddle them.

The office is also to be taken from those who through age have become unfit to administer it. In Germany one uses the fine expression: they are emeritated. Yet one should first deal with such a man himself and seek to move him to resign voluntarily. Should he refuse, then the congregation has the sacred duty to take the office from him.

According to Scripture a bishop shall be competent to feed the church of God. If he lacks this competence, let him rather keep swine; for in that he can still be useful to the world, but not in the preaching office. He is a scoundrel who knows that he does not understand his office, and yet