LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 160

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160

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS

this area, many details of which are not dictated in the Constitution
or Bylaws of the Synod or of the districts, may be much more readily achievable, and may also well serve the Synod and its members,
both congregational and individual.

PART I: Franchise in The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod
Principle of franchise in the Synod:
the Pfarrgemeinde concept
The basic principle of franchise in the Synod at the time of its
formation in 1847 involved two essential components. The first
essential component was that the Synod consisted of equal congregations or parishes (Pfarrgemeinden) [1], no matter their numerical size, and it was these that held the franchise. The second
essential component was the maintaining of a “balance of power”
in the conventions of the Synod between the clergy and the laity.
To accomplish this principle of franchise, the 1847 Constitution of
the Synod assigned the franchise to each member Pfarrgemeinde
(“pastor-congregation” or “parish”) of the Synod, with each Pfarrgemeinde to receive two votes, one to be cast by its pastor and the
other by the lay delegate accredited by the parish. [2]
This arrangement developed during the course of the discussions that led to the founding of the Synod. The initial impetus for
the formation of the Synod came from the men Pastor Wilhelm
Löhe had sent to the United States to provide spiritual care for its
many German immigrants. Löhe had instructed them to join one of
the established synods in their new land. They did so but were not
satisfied with the theology they found in those synods. In December 1844, Pastors Wilhelm Sihler and Adam Ernst sent a letter to
C.F.W. Walther, the pastor of Trinity, St. Louis, asking if it would
be possible to form an organized union with the Saxons.
In his January 2, 1845, response, Walther expressed a desire for
unity, but at the same time he noted that among the Saxon immigrants there was a great fear of clergy domination (C.F.W. Walther,
ed. Carl S. Meyer, Walther Speaks to the Church: Selected Letters
[St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973], 15). A meeting was
scheduled in Cleveland in September 1845, to which Walther was
invited; his health, however, did not allow him to attend.
The meeting was held Sept. 13–18, 1845, in Cleveland for the
purpose of proposing a constitution for a Synod with the doctrine
and polity taken from the Word of God and the Lutheran Confessions. While a rough draft of a constitution was produced, no copy
of it has survived. However, Pastor Wilhelm Sihler published a series of articles following the meeting, in which he laid out his ideas
regarding the nature of such a Synod. After showing how it would
be impossible to copy the organization of the church as it was in
Europe on the American soil, Sihler states his ideas how such a
Synod could be organized:
According to Sihler a synod should not merely be advisory, but it should be a body, or corporation, which would in the
name of the Church, i.e., the whole number of the adult and
confirmed members, direct, watch over, and administer the
Church. The synod should not be simply a ministerium, composed of members of the clergy only, but worthy members of
the laity would be elected by their congregations to synodical membership. These laymen, together with the clergymen,
would constitute the synod. This synod would then regulate,
direct, and administer all matters pertaining to the doctrine,
life, worship, and discipline of the Church. To quote Sihler:
2023 Convention Workbook

“All means, therefore, which would in any way preserve
and further the Church according to its essence and purpose,
the synod, according to its ability, would have to inaugurate
energetically and watch over its harmonious and active cooperation.” This conception of a synod and its jurisdiction
was radically different from that held by Walther in St. Louis.
(Carl S. Mundinger, Government in the Missouri Synod [St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1947], 175n.)
During much of May 1846, the pastors held a series of meetings
in St. Louis at which the voters of Trinity congregation were also
involved. By the end of this meeting, a complete draft of the constitution was formulated. Sihler and the other eastern pastors had,
in their time with Walther and Trinity, St. Louis, been won over to
the potential of a fundamentally congregational, yet confessional,
polity in which the laity had an equal part. Naysayers of Trinity, St.
Louis, still smarting from the Stephan affair, were also convinced
that the rights of congregations and of the priesthood of all believers would, under such a polity, be preserved (idem, 178–79). The
Constitution would be put into its final form at a meeting in Fort
Wayne in July 1846 and adopted at the formation of the Synod in
Chicago in April 1847.
It is important to note that this polity’s basic franchise principle, while an adiaphoron, was totally consistent with concepts
Walther had presented in the Altenburg Theses as he led the Saxon
immigrants out of the chaos that followed the debacle with Martin
Stephan. The church consists in the community of believers, and
all ecclesiastical authority resides in the congregation. This was
later developed in greater detail in Kirche und Amt (C.F.W. Walther, Church and Ministry: The Voice of Our Church on the Question of Church and Office [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
2012]. Since it is each congregation that possesses all ecclesiastical authority, each parish possesses an equal vote (the equality of
congregational votes is known as Stimmengleichheit). The office
of pastor is a divine institution, and this office is conferred through
the congregation as the possessor of all ecclesiastical authority. The
pastor is charged to exercise spiritual care of the parish. At the same
time, the parish is primarily the members, the laypeople. Therefore,
it was concluded that each parish received two votes, one by its
pastor and the other by its lay delegate.
Kirche und Amt was affirmed in 1851 and reaffirmed in 2001
as the official position of the Synod, the “definitive statement under Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions of the Synod’s
understanding on the subject of church and ministry” (2001 Res.
7-17A). The Pfarrgemeinde/Stimmengleichheit trans-parochial
polity of the Synod can be seen to align logically with the scriptural and dogmatic foundations of the Synod, especially in relation to “Church” Theses VI–VIII and “Ministry” Theses III, V–X.
The trans-parochial polity of the Synod also aligns with Walther’s
further practical development of intra-congregational polity in his
1864 book, The Right Form of a Christian Congregation, especially with its parts VI and VII (trans. J.T. Mueller and published with
The True Visible Church [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House,
2005]).
The Synod is conceived as an aid and extension of such congregations, and not of any other constituencies or units of the church
(not individual believers, estates, or vocations). Believers, estates,
and vocations relate to one another in their respective congregations. These congregations relate to and work with one another
through the Synod. Though other forms of church polity are possible within the freedom the Church enjoys, it would be difficult