# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

tribulations and joys, successes and failures, many kinds of affliction in good days and evil; where God lets rain and sunshine come also upon the Church; where from the evil Foe, together with the ungodly world, the Church and its members must experience all manner of hostilities, assaults, cunning and malice, even, if God permits it, fire and sword, chains and bonds. That does not belong to church practice; for in church practice it is the Church that acts and works there, the Church that makes the arrangements and maintains, preserves and promotes them. Thus the Church is active there, and indeed as a congregation, or through its servants. On the other hand, not everything that the members of the congregation and the servants of the Church do belongs to church practice. When the pastor takes a pleasure drive with his family, this is not a piece of church practice. When the congregation holds a meeting to deliberate what it can do against a public evil that affects the majority of its members, where the members as friends, who have earthly interests in common, wish for once to take counsel, that is not a piece of church practice, and it should not be regarded as though the congregation were acting there as a congregation. Likewise a number of congregations may deliberate together how they will meet a perverse legislative measure of the state; if it is not a matter of conscience but of things indifferent [Mitteldinge, adiaphora], one cannot say that this is a piece of church practice, nor raise the reproach that the congregations have thereby mixed church and state.

In church practice the congregation, the Church, acts in churchly matters, in such matters as belong to church life as such. But everything that the Church does there belongs to church practice. Whether the congregation in its totality, or through its servants, through its appointed preachers or the board, acts, works and arranges in church affairs, that is its church practice, the totality of these things, the totality of the functions and institutions which belong to church life as such. To this belong, then, all the official functions of the preacher, of the schoolmaster, of the church elders, the calling of preachers, teachers and elders, the congregational meetings and the business done in them which concerns the affairs of the congregation as such, the admission of congregation members, the exercise of church discipline, announcement for confession, celebration of the Lord's Supper, observance of certain festivals and holy days, the coming together of congregations in synods, the founding of church institutions, the carrying on of the work of missions, indeed everything that is in any way included in the command of Christ: "Go and teach them to observe all that I have commanded you."

Several inquiries led the presenter here to the following additions: