# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S8
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

8 Proceedings of the seventeenth convention

A Christian congregation, and above all the pastor of a Christian congregation, must conscientiously strive for a right practice in harmony with God's Word with regard to the administration of the sacrament of holy baptism. That baptism is to be performed according to Christ's prescription, especially according to the baptismal command in Matt. 28, is settled among us all from the outset. A divergence among us regarding the elements that make up the essence of baptism is not to be feared. Let us therefore go straight on to a point that does not belong to the essence of a valid act of baptism, namely the institution of sponsorship or baptismal witnessing. Let us first keep the two things apart: not every sponsor is a baptismal witness, and not every baptismal witness is to be regarded, in the full churchly sense, as a sponsor. One can be a sponsor who was not a baptismal witness, to whom someone has written: "The little child is to be baptized on such and such a Sunday, and we would ask you to accept a sponsor's place." This is not an empty and thoughtless courtesy which one shows to such a godfather who cannot be present at the baptism. Whoever has thus accepted the office of sponsor knows: You have someone who is not of your own flesh and blood, for whom you are to care, on whom you are to keep an eye, for whom you are to pray, whose growing up you are to watch over, for whom you have given surety, for whom you have become a *sponsor*. For what? That this child, when it comes to years, be instructed in the truth unto salvation. He was then not a baptismal witness, was not present, but a sponsor he is, and he should know that he has really and truly become a sponsor, a surety for this child. Such a suretyship he has undertaken before God, before the church and before this child, if it learns of it. The child thereby has a claim on the one who has become its surety. The church has thereupon a right to hold him to fulfilling his duty as surety, if circumstances have come to be such that this duty remains for him to fulfil: to hold to the sponsor, that this little child be properly instructed in the Christian truth, when no one else stands closer to the child, when the parents have died or become unbelieving, or in some way the parents withhold from the child what it is to have according to Christ's will and ordinance: baptize and teach. Indeed, in a certain sense the sponsor stands there from the outset already as an exponent of the church, in that the church, in whose midst the holy sacrament of baptism is administered, has in the sponsor too a certain guarantee that Christ's command is being carried out on this child. On the other hand, one can be a baptismal witness whom one will not recognize as a sponsor, of whom one will not and may not expect, cannot expect without bringing him into danger of his soul, that he undertake the actual duties of a sponsor, that he stand in for the church as surety for the carrying out of Christ's command on his godchild, but