# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S126
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

126 Church and Contemporary History.

II. Abroad.

Church Visitation in the Province of Saxony. From a report in the
Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung of Dec. 31, 1859, whose purpose is to
present to the reader an overall picture of church life in the
Province of Saxony, we extract the following: "Unfortunately our
provincial church has thus far enjoyed the blessing of a general
visitation only four times. It would be an incalculable loss for the
church if this noblest growth of our more recent church life should
wither again for want of care, and all who love the church should
unite in the petition that the right reverend Evangelical Superior
Church Council may continue, with godly zeal and without wearying,
the work begun in such full blessing — for which it would ever reap
new thanks and God's rich reward..... But will not these visitations
always find a hindrance in the overburdening of the general
superintendents with other work, an obstacle which could only be
removed by reducing the size of their districts of oversight, or by
commissioning other suitable persons from among them with
visitations? Our consistory has therefore been all the more intent on
setting the special visitations of the superintendent on a good
footing. It insists with great earnestness that these visit the
clergy subordinate to them at least every three or four years, and it
receives from them annually more than two hundred and fifty
visitation reports. The visitation is announced to the clergyman
fourteen days beforehand, and a printed schedule is sent to him at
the same time, containing the visitation questions — of which there
are some ninety — touching every possible official as well as
necessary personal circumstance, and which he must answer and return
to the superintendent, usually eight days before the visitation. When
the superintendent has thus obtained from the answers a fairly
sufficient preliminary account of the condition of the congregation
to be visited, he then always holds the visitation itself on a
Sunday, at which the clergyman as a rule preaches in the morning,
catechizes the confirmed youth in the afternoon, and the
superintendent delivers more or less detailed addresses to the
assembled congregation, in which its shortcomings are exposed and,
according to circumstances, rebuke and comfort are dispensed. Besides
this, discussions take place with the local and church councils, and
sometimes also with the heads of households of the congregation, and
many superintendents hold an evening service as well. The main thing,
however, remains the brotherly conference of the superintendent with
the visited clergyman, both about the sermon and catechesis heard, as
well as about his whole official activity, following the guidance of
the answered visitation questions and on the basis of the
observations made at the visitation. On the degree of thoroughness,
fullness, openness, and true brotherliness of this conference chiefly
depends the blessing of the whole visitation. With the more or less
detailed report of the superintendent, besides the answered
visitation questions, a copy of the clergyman's sermon and the draft
of the catechesis are also sent in to the consistory, so that it is
thereby granted a fairly complete insight into the whole official
activity of the clergyman and into the condition of the visited
congregation. The proposal has occasionally been made to arrange
unannounced visitations. Under certain circumstances these will
always be advisable, but were they to become the rule, they would
never afford so complete a picture of the entire circumstances of the
visited clergyman and congregation. It is, then, the consistory's
rulings upon the superintendent's report by which it exercises so
comprehensive and powerful an influence upon the superintendents, the
pastors, and, indirectly, upon the remaining church officers and the
congregations as well. Although so many of these must be issued in
the course of the year, the reviewer must say, so far as his
knowledge extends, that they are composed with uncommon diligence and
with great earnestness. The manner and method of the visitation is
judged, the clergyman's sermon is reviewed with all strictness, the
answers to the visitation questions are gone into precisely, the
whole official efficacy as well as the condition of the congregation
are judged with all justice and truth, so far as this can be done,
recognition and censure are pronounced candidly and as due, all
according to the rule of the divine