# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1877_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 35 —

also quite away from your congregation; otherwise by your running over into another parish you give great offense and cause division.

Something quite different, however, is it when a preacher is indeed no heretic but is nevertheless a thoroughly incompetent man who is not able to conduct his office properly. Such a one must be removed. But even then you have no right to leave him without further ado, but should report him to the proper authority and insist that the office be taken from him again. It would be wrong, cruel, indeed ungodly, to impose such a preacher on a congregation any longer. But if the man has only few gifts, yet shows that he has a pure and clear knowledge of the pure doctrine and besides a burning zeal to win souls, and is only, for example, inarticulate, often makes slips of speech, etc., then you should, even if you were the most learned of men, gladly go to church with such a man. It would be shameful pride if you were to despise this preacher, who is a Christian and himself sighs over the fact that it comes so hard to him. One should regard it rather as a thoroughly wholesome cross and thank God that he has nevertheless still given us such a man.

Thereupon Point 3 was unanimously adopted and discussion of the fourth point was taken up. It reads:

"A ground for changing parish relationships cannot, finally, be: 4. the growth of weeds in a congregation in which the means of grace are still in operation unadulterated (Matt. 13:24 ff.), which is why the apostle does not urge the upright Christians in the corrupt congregation at Corinth to leave it, but rather to hold the more firmly together and not to let division arise among themselves (1 Cor. 1:10; cf. 5:1, 2, 6; 6:1–8; 11:17–22, 30; 15:12, 34; 2 Cor. 12:20, 21)."

In Matt. 14:24 ff. [as printed] the LORD says: "The kingdom of heaven is like" etc. One should therefore not think that where weeds are found, the kingdom of heaven cannot be. On the contrary, there is no place on earth where the kingdom of heaven, the holy Church, is found in which there are not at the same time also the weeds, namely hypocrites and the ungodly. If someone therefore has nothing else to object to than this, he should not separate from his congregation.

It is of course a heavy cross for a serious and advanced Christian when, from an old good congregation in which strict church discipline is practiced, he comes through a move into a new congregation where much is still amiss and the preacher cannot at once undertake a sifting. But for God's sake he should not let himself be deterred by this from joining such a new congregation, or even leaving it again. Perhaps there are more true Christians in the new congregation than he thinks, while in that old well-ordered congregation very many hypocrites can be found.