# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

would like to claim, namely how it goes in other congregations. The local congregation should know where, in the matters ordained and fixed by God, the Lord, Himself, it exercises a practice, there it exercises such practice to the Lord and in obedience to God's Word. Only so will it also have the right joyfulness and firmness, when it knows: We stand here on God's Word; we go on in obedience to our King and Lord; we stand here against the devil and his whole kingdom, and even if we stood against the great majority of congregations, we nevertheless have the majority, for Christ is with us.

It holds now also of free practice that, since the congregation comes into consideration first of all as a local congregation, the local congregation must first of all become clear about what is divinely ordained and what is left to the free discretion of the congregation. The local congregation must first of all learn to distinguish cleanly for itself what shall be, and what may be. It must first of all hold fast that as a local congregation it can make no laws for its members. It can only set up orders, free orders, but make no laws. It oversteps its powers as soon as it sets itself up as a legislative body. It is not a legislative body; it is not a political popular assembly with legislative power. In it neither does an aristocracy hold; nor should it let a priestly rule be imposed on it, should it let pass that those who hold the pastoral office lay orders upon it as laws; and if it were a whole pastoral conference or a synod, it should nevertheless know: Here for our members, for those who belong to us, we must carefully preserve the freedom with which Christ has set us free, and let no servile yoke be laid upon our necks.

But further, the local congregation must not forget that freedom is not caprice or unreason. Christians are reasonable people, who are to arrange their doing and leaving undone with understanding and wisdom, as is most expedient. There the circumstances of the individual local congregation are again first to be decisive. A pattern of this we have in the congregation at Jerusalem. There were first of all teachers and hearers. That was to be so; the Lord Christ had ordained it; it did not depend on special circumstances. But there were also special conditions. There the apostles were in the midst of the congregation and served as teachers. As apostles they were not the local pastors of this congregation; but since they were still in Jerusalem and the congregation recognized this high gift, it accepted the apostles as preachers and teachers with great joy and thankfulness. But this was a congregation which from the first day of its existence lived as an ecclesia pressa [a church under pressure]. It began with the first sermons; the enmity came to light in words, as in the mocking speech: "They are full of new wine"; and not long afterward it also made itself