# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 19 —

is the land where one can behave quite freely and need let oneself be told nothing by anyone. And what is to become of our youth when it perceives this: people preach sternly, to be sure, but exercise no discipline; then they make it dull toward the pure doctrine; quite apart from the offence that is given to the false-believing communions by neglect of salutary discipline.

A particularly important reason why church discipline should be exercised in every church communion is, so that the preachers do not make themselves guilty of a breach of trust concerning the Sacrament of the Altar. Luther teaches this as follows:

"It is true, to be sure, that where the preachers give out mere bread and wine for the Sacrament, it makes little difference to whom they give it or what they can and believe who receive it. There one sow eats with the other, and they are rightly spared such trouble; for they want wild, mad saints, and do not think of bringing up Christians, but want to bring it about that in three years everything shall be destroyed, that neither God, nor Christ, nor Sacrament, nor Christians remain. But because we intend to bring up Christians and to leave them behind us, and in the Sacrament to give Christ's body and blood, we will and can give such a Sacrament to no one unless he has first been examined as to what he has learned of the Catechism and whether he is willing to give up the sins he has committed against it. For we will not make a pigsty of Christ's Church and let everyone run unexamined to the Sacrament, like sows to the trough. Such churches we leave to the enthusiasts." (Warning Letter to Those at Frankfurt. 1533. XVII, 2449 f.)

One can hardly assume that a preacher believes from the heart that the true body and the true blood of Christ are in the Lord's Supper when he exercises no church discipline, nor the foundation of church discipline, the announcement for Communion [*Beichtanmeldung*]. Every preacher who wants to exercise church discipline must insist that everyone who wants to go to the Sacrament report to him, not merely in order to have his name written down, but also in order to give his pastor opportunity to convince himself whether the person reporting, so far as one can judge by love, is a Christian. To investigate whether the person reporting 1.) knows enough of God's plan of salvation to be saved; 2.) whether he has the necessary knowledge of the Lord's Supper; 3.) whether he also lives as a Christian, and so deed and word of confession agree in him.

If we in the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] want to be not mere dispensers but stewards, we must press for personal announcement for Communion. In order to rouse ourselves to earnest faithfulness in the demand for and use of the institution of announcement for Communion, let it be borne in mind that if we let people go to the Lord's Supper in their sins, we confirm them in their sin and thereby make ourselves