# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

Whoever forgets this is already in great danger of terribly disrupting the Church. For as certainly as one disrupts the Church if one does not teach and believe what God has taught, if one puts out of sight what God has ordained, so certainly one disrupts it if one adds to what God has ordained what one has oneself ordained, and pretends that God also ordained it. For then the flesh gains, then Satan, the father of lies, gains room, who already in paradise put his If and But to what God had said, and who managed to bring it about that our first mother let what God had said and what Satan said count at first equally, and then it did not take long before what the devil had said counted for everything, and what God had said, for nothing at all.

In reply to an inquiry the following was answered: In the cases which sometimes cause great difficulty and deeply disturb the congregation, when it is a matter of long-established orders, one will come to the goal most finely and surely if one holds fast: This is a human order here, but an order which the congregation has established because it considered it profitable. The task of the pastor and of the congregation will then be to make clear to the one who will not conform to it: This is a profitable order for you and the whole congregation, just conform to it — to make clear to him from what ground each single part takes place and has hitherto so taken place, so that he sees it. It may then happen that such a person on this occasion is revealed as an unbelieving, godless person, to whom membership in the congregation means nothing of consequence, who prefers to give the congregation his farewell rather than even let himself be dealt with brotherly. But if someone now perhaps proves to the congregation that in his case the order is not profitable, because things and circumstances are present which were not present in other cases — then the congregation will possibly be able to say: The man is not wrong; in this case we ought really to depart from the order, since in this case it is not the most profitable. It may also be that the congregation in such a case sees that the accustomed order, which was perhaps profitable earlier, no longer serves its purpose as before, and therefore abolishes it.

Here belong also the free synodical institutions and measures. A synod is itself a free thing, not a divine institution, but a human arrangement. When such a union of congregations makes arrangements and agrees on measures which again are neither commanded by God nor equally forbidden by God, then on the one hand the synod may not treat these arrangements as binding on conscience or want to compel the individual congregation to help carry out what has been resolved; but on the other hand it may also not suffer that anyone