LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 387

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 387

He does point out that “a congregation has the right to admonish
such a pastor, and to remind him of his duty....”(emphasis added).*
Such admonition, however, may be to no avail without the backing
of an evangelical Lutheran synod. Two paragraphs later Walther
contends,
You see, a synod will always support the congregation if it can
prove that its pastor is unfaithful to his office, lazy, indifferent, im-
moral, power-hungry, stubborn, or is living in manifest sins.
Through the District President the Synod will visit the congregation
and will support those who are right. He may know best how to dis-
arm those who support the unfaithful, wicked pastor (emphasis
added).**
The question may be asked, does Walther’s reference here to “dis-
arming” those who support an “unfaithful, wicked pastor” imply
that a congregation has the right to remove a pastor who is guilty of
any of those listed behaviors and attitudes?

In his essay to the Iowa District convention Walther seems to
offer yet another reason for the removal of a pastor, namely, a dom-
ineering spirit. In Thesis If he submits that an evangelical Lutheran
synod should “protect them [congregations] against pastors who
err in doctrine, follow an offensive life-style, and are domineering
in their office.”*” As if to emphasize the point, Walther opens his
discussion of this part of Thesis II by noting that his hearers should
not think “that the congregation cannot depose anyone because of
godless living and that it cannot get rid of one who oversteps his
authority and proves to be domineering....” (emphasis added).**
Walther proceeds to discuss the matter on the basis of 3 John 9-10.
In this passage John mentions Diotrephes, who is a bishop or pastor
who wants to be “Number One” (philoproteu“on). Diotrephes

loved power and honor, was a proud and arrogant bishop. He
wouldn’t even listen to the apostle John. He would say, ““What do I
care about him?” Then John adds, “Therefore, when I come, I will
remind him of what he is really doing,” etc. You see, when people
who had a better grasp of things than most and could therefore
quickly show him up for what he was, came from other congrega-
tions to this one, he refused to accept them, even if they came with
a letter of endorsement from the apostle.

When members of his own congregation insisted, “We must accept
these people because the apostles have recommended them,” this
fellow simply excluded them from the congregation. That’s the kind
of scoundrel he was! That is why the apostle promises, “I will come
and remind him of what he is doing,” and though church history
doesn’t record it, no doubt John did come and flatly tell the congre-
gation that they should remove him from office.

What Walther says here is consistent with his earlier comments that

the congregation has proper cause to remove a pastor who “over-

steps his authority and proves to be domineering.”

If one were to draw up a single comprehensive list of causes for
which a congregation might remove a pastor on the basis of the
foregoing discussion, it might look like this:

1. Teaching false doctrine

2. Offensive conduct or scandalous life

3. Deliberate unfaithfulness in the performance of offi-

cial duties

4. Neglect of, or inability to perform, official duties

5. Domineering in office
It is possible to argue that points 3, 4, and 5 may in fact be sub-
points under 2. Be this as it may, what these causes for removal
suggested by Walther have in common is that each of them under-
mines the ministry of the Word.

Contemporary Issues and Practices

The Scriptures show that at times God called men into the pub-
lic service of his Word immediately, i.e., directly by his own voice
without the use of human instruments, as when he called Abraham
in the Old Testament or Saul in the New Testament. The Scriptures
do not indicate that God intends to call men into the office of the
pastoral ministry in this way down to the present day. The New
Testament provides several instances when God also selected and

appointed individuals to the ministry of the church through the
apostles and the church (that is, mediately). It reports how the
church selected Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas. It also
contains Paul’s instructions to Titus to appoint elders in various
towns. The Lutheran Confessions (AC XIV; cf. Tr 67) likewise
consistently maintain over against the Anabaptists and other
“ravers” (Enthusiasts) that God calls individuals into the office of
the public ministry through the church, i.e., teachers and hearers.

Since God places men into the pastoral office through the
church, the call possesses both a divine and a human dimension.
The call is divine in that God has taken the initiative to establish
the office. It is God who calls an individual to serve the ministry of
the Word within the office. And it is God who promises to bless
such work. But the call also has a human dimension in that God
entrusts the task of calling to human beings. They are to see to it
that the office is filled in a decent and orderly manner. These two
dimensions—the divine and the human—correspond to the two di-
mensions of the church itself. On the one hand, the church is, prop-
erly speaking, the assembly of believers gathered by the Holy Spirit
around Christ proclaimed in the Word and Christ present in the
sacraments. These are constitutive of the church. On the other hand,
the church possesses an organizational character as its members
arrange for the regular distribution of the means of grace. Although
the divine character of the call is primary, the human activity by
which the divine cal] is issued is not without importance.

As the church carries out its responsibility of serving as God’s
instrument for calling individuals into the office of the pastoral
ministry, it must distinguish between these two dimensions when
establishing a call process. The church must always administer the
call in ways that respect and uphold its divine character, while at
the same time affirming the contingent character of the human pro-
cedures developed within a given context. Humanly devised pro-
cedures should not be treated as if they are divine mandates. Nor
should they be carried out in such a way as to lose sight of the fact
that the Lord of the church is the one who ultimately calls men into
the office of the public ministry. In the history of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod the greater danger perhaps has been to
take for granted the human side of the calling process, and in fact
this seems actually to have happened in certain cases. Today the
danger seems to be that we try so hard to find a “perfect fit” that we
exhibit a lack of trust in the Lord to safeguard his church.

Until more recent times a high degree of uniformity in call prac-
tices no doubt has caused some to take the human dimension of the
call for granted. District Presidents have customarily provided a list
of names for congregations from which they then select and call
one of the candidates, often sight unseen. However, today the in-
crease in specialized ministries, the greatly expanded duties of pas-
tors, the diversity of worship styles, the variety of administrative
structures, the particularities of team ministry, and the growing im-
portance of specialized skills have created the need for identifying
the best candidate possible.” As a result, new elements in the call
process have been developed to meet these specialized needs and
the variety of processes has increased as well.

Basic Considerations

While affirming and confessing the divine character of the call
into the pastoral ministry, we must also submit the human side of
the call process to closer examination and evaluation. Although
these processes or procedures may be considered adiaphora (prac-
tices that are neither forbidden nor commanded by Scripture), it
should also be emphasized that not all adiaphora are equal. Some
practices reflect the theology of the call better than others. Some
obscure the divine character of the call more than others. To pro-
vide greater clarity for implementing the call process, a set of cri-
teria for guiding the development of procedures should be estab-
lished. In light of the resources found within the Lutheran

2004 Convention Workbook