# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1862_S294
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

294 Report for the Sessions of the Synod of Missouri, etc., Western District.

belong to adults, confess the faith that Holy Scripture
of the Old and New Testament is God's Word, and that the doctrine contained in the
confessions of the evangelical Lutheran Church, namely in Luther's Small Catechism and in
the unaltered Augsburg Confession, is the pure Christian
doctrine, Galatians 2:4; 2 Corinthians 6:14–18; 2 John 10–11; Ephesians 4:3–6;
and who, finally, third, lead a Christian, inoffensive walk of life,
1 Corinthians 5:9–13; 10:21; Matthew 7:6.

§ 30. The congregation must, in a public assembly according to God's Word and
in Christian order, before witnesses (2 Corinthians 13:1), investigate the case of those
of its members who are reported to it as such who in doctrine or life have
been disobedient to God's Word and have been admonished in vain according to
Matthew 18:15–16, or whose false doctrine or sin is known and manifest; must
convict those found guilty of their error or
their sin, admonish and rebuke them (2 Corinthians 2:6;
2 Thessalonians 3:14–15; Galatians 2:11–14; 1 Timothy 5:20); but those,
however, who will not hear it and persist, impenitent and stiff-necked, in a
ruinous error or in a manifest mortal sin, are, by unanimous resolution,
to be publicly put out of the congregation or into the
ban by the minister of the Word, Matthew 18:17–20 (1 Corinthians 5:1–5, 9–13; Romans 16:17;
2 Timothy 2:17–21; Titus 3:10–11); it must therefore no longer
recognize them as brothers but regard them as heathen and tax collectors, and accordingly
deny them the rights of a brother and abolish all brotherly fellowship of faith
with them; but against those who will not consent to such a
ban, it must proceed with Christian discipline (1 Corinthians 5:1–2);
those, on the other hand, on whom the ban has achieved its purpose, and who
accordingly return penitently, it must publicly absolve and receive back,
2 Corinthians 2:6–11.

§ 31. To be sure, the congregation ought not to presume to
depose, according to the arbitrary will of its office, its preachers and
others who administer an ecclesiastical office in it; but if these should fall
into errors dangerous to souls, and, after having been found guilty in an orderly
investigation, 1 Timothy 5:19, will let themselves be corrected neither by the congregation
nor by the orthodox ministers of the Word called in to assist, or if they become
manifest as stiff-necked, impenitent sinners, or have committed some fall through
which they lose the good testimony of those who are outside and cause the enemies
of the Lord to blaspheme, then the congregation must, in Christian order
(to which, under certain circumstances, a provisional suspension belongs), remove
them from their office as ones whom God Himself has
deposed, Matthew 7:15; Hosea 4:6; John 10:5, 8; 1 Timothy 3:1; Titus 1:6–7; 1 Timothy 3:6–7.

§ 32. Finally, the congregation must also take care that neither it as a
congregation, nor any single member, enter into ecclesiastical union with unbelievers
or the erring, and thereby make itself guilty of a mingling of faiths,
churches, and religions, 2 Corinthians 6:14–18; 2 John 10–11.