# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1864_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20

(Submitted by Prof. Crämer.)
Our Local Conferences.

Motto: "There is nothing that keeps people more attached to the Church than good preaching." Apolog. Art. XII.

It might perhaps seem strange to some that, for an essay meant to deal with our smaller conferences, that incomparable, undisputed, and indisputable passage from the Apology should be found as a motto; yet everyone will at once notice in what connection these conferences are to be treated here. — It is indeed a sign, to be acknowledged with joyful thanks toward God, of a lively spirit and a healthy impulse toward fellowship, that wherever in our Synod smaller circles of brothers in office stand close enough together geographically to make the thing feasible, local conferences generally spring up at once into being — and indeed conferences in the proper sense, not for pastime and social entertainment, but in order really to gather together the experiences gained in office, the joys of office and the much greater sorrows of office, to exchange them with one another and share them; to take counsel together over difficult cases, so that conscience may thereby become the more secure and cheerful; and especially also in order to make common property, for one another, of what has been gathered through faithful continued study, to further and ground one another in all wholesome knowledge — in short, to serve one another in love and faithfulness, each with the gift he has received. But however splendid, however wholesome and beneficial this, when rightly applied, undoubtedly is — indeed, precisely because it is this — flesh and the devil are certainly also very busy putting hindrances and disturbances in its way. Then, through the fault of sinful flesh, times of weariness, of slackening, of reluctance set in; then some conferences appear, or indeed are, not fruitful enough; then other hindrances are added; then soon this one and that one is missing, indeed one or another withdraws almost entirely, and zeal grows ever more feeble. The devil, too, steps into the way and shoots the question: what are you doing with your time? Can't and shouldn't you put it to better use, and let yourself be found busy in your office? — an arrow through the heart, which wounds all the more surely since most, after all, still have to attend to the laborious, time- and strength-consuming schoolwork alongside their heavy, highly responsible office of preaching. Then the poor, embattled conscience easily grows timid; the joy, the courage to go to the conference, sinks away; then first one, then another stays away, and so the matter falls ever more into stagnation and threatens in the end to fall asleep altogether. Now, of course, it is easy enough to see that such rising misgivings about conferences so rightly conducted and faithfully used are only temptations from the tiresome devil, to whom the blessing of these gatherings is quite vexing