LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 427

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 427

ological professor to serve as its associate pastor. Yet even in the
absence of such a call, the Synod can certainly expect a theological
professor to be a communicant member in good standing of a con-
gregation in the synodical fellowship that sponsors his institution.
His routine participation in the conduct of the Divine Service, even
if only to read the Scripture lesson or assist with Communion dis-
tribution, declares and reinforces that congregation’s acknowl-
edgement that he holds the Predigtamt.

Whether the office held by theological professors should be
considered (a) identical with the office of the Holy Ministry, or (b)
auxiliary to it, remains on ongoing debate within The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod. Either way, the Call to that office should
be extended in an open-ended manner. To dismiss the proclaimer at
the termination of a temporary contract is to fetter the proclama-
tion of the Word.

If the college or seminary does not know a man’s academic
abilities, scholarship, and teaching aptitude, then it should perhaps
not call him for any length of time. For this reason, the probation-
ary line of argument employed in the Commission’s Report invites
a problematic view of the Divine Call. The Scripture does indeed
say, “Let them first be tested” (1 Tim. 3:10), but this should occur
prior to the Call, not during some initial probationary period of the
Call. For years, seminaries have brought men in to teach during
summer sessions, and this has proven to be a perfectly suitable
means of assessing the aforementioned qualities.

On this there can be certain agreement: seminaries and Christian
colleges ought not be considered as spinning in their own au-
tonomous galaxy known as the ‘‘academy.” They were created by
the Church in order to serve the Church and her proclamation of
the Gospel. The institutions of the Church, including her acade-
mies, can be anchored no more firmly than the individual people
who comprise those institutions. A proper understanding of the the-
ology professor’s Call is, therefore, no mere “academic” matter.

Temporary Calls and Missionaries

The Divine Call remains the Lord’s Call, and the Lord of the
Harvest, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, does not lack the
resources to provide for His called servants. Stewardship of lim-
ited funds and past investments is our concern, not His, and proves
nothing to compel a limited duration to any Divine Call for a mis-
sionary or any other person in the office of the Holy Ministry. Cer-
tainly, a “church planter” can be called by the new congregation
gathered by the Word he has preached, or he can be called or sent
to a new field of work by another congregation.

Temporary Calls and Intentional Interim Ministers (IIM) ©

Historically, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has served
vacant congregations with vacancy pastors. The last decade has
seen the introduction of a new position entitled “intentional interim
ministers” (IIM), an innovation apparently adopted from the
ELCA, which borrowed it from the United Methodist Church. Sev-
eral forms and models of this arrangement undoubtedly exist, so
generalizations will not always apply.

Most pastors and District Presidents know (some through per-
sonal experience) of dysfunctional or “problem” congregations that
“chew up and spit out” one pastor after another. The ITM concept
has been justified and employed in part to help such congregations
to become “functional” so that the next man they call does not suf-
fer the unfortunate experience(s) of his predecessor(s).

The LCMS has always insisted that the proper administration
of the Sacraments and the exercise of the Office of the Keys must
be confined to the one office of the Holy Ministry. By definition,
therefore, if the I[M is to administer Baptism or Communion (or to
suspend from Communion®), then his Call cannot be arbitrarily
limited or subject to a “‘negotiated” term. Otherwise, he is clearly
not fulfilling a Call, but a contract, and he must be regarded as

serving not in the one office of the Holy Ministry, but in an auxil-
iary office.

The sticking point is this: either the IIM has a legitimate Divine
Call (as defined above), or he does not. Either he is in the office of
the Holy Ministry, or he is not. It does not seem possible to “as-
sign” a man to a congregation as an [IM without running afoul of
Walther’s clear strictures against a temporary call.

The concept would seem to invite abuse by both congregation
and pastor: the congregation can “dump” the man as soon as they
find something about him they do not like, and the pastor can use
the arrangement to his advantage by hopping from place to place
until he finds something lucrative or otherwise more desirable.

Congregations always retain the right of seeking pastoral ser-
vices from a nearby congregation through the Synod’s traditional
means: a vacancy pastor. This arrangement can function much like
a typical dual-parish situation until the vacant congregation calls
another pastor who accepts their call. The services of an IIM could
still be employed by assigning him as an assistant pastor under the
vacancy pastor. The latter would exercise ultimate pastoral respon-
sibility over the vacant congregation while also retaining the Call to
his current congregation. Perhaps in this way, the congregation can
be served by a called pastor and an IIM—without compromising
the unlimited tenure of a Divine Call. When the IIM takes another
Call, and the congregation calls a pastor who does not view himself
as a “temporary shepherd,” the vacancy pastor remains in the
neighborhood to help the new man understand what has transpired.
(The IIM who “moves on” may never know the repercussions of
his work.)

Otherwise, the congregation should simply ignore the IIM
“Jabel” and issue him an open-ended Call. Any stipulation forbid-
ding the congregation from calling that intentional interim minister
as their “long term” pastor violates that congregation’s freedom
and right under Missourian polity to call any pastor in good stand-
ing on the synodical roster.

Certainly the IIM ought not force the congregation to move
faster or slower than it wishes to do with respect to calling another
pastor—the right to call remains theirs and theirs alone.

Most arguments employed in favor of this “intentional interim
ministry” concept depend much more heavily upon sociological
and anthropological than upon biblical, confessional or theological
reasoning. Pieper’s special case of “temporary assistance” (see pp.
11-12 above) does not apply here, because the HIM is not employed
for cases of necessity in non-vacant congregations, but in congre-
gations who could fill the vacancy in their office of the Holy Min-
istry with a regular Call.

Further work is certainly needed to determine if this concept
can be sufficiently reconstituted and properly exercised in a manner
that can be considered faithful to our Lutheran theology. To set it
forth as an instructive example of how the theology and practice of
the Divine Call (which, as previously acknowledged, specifically
precludes “temporary calls”) can benefit from innovative contem-
porary modifications seems biblically and confessionally unsup-
ported and theologically problematic.

May Calls Be Conditional?

The CTCR Report’s final paragraph under this section is excel-
lent. It begins:

Calls should never be issued under certain prescribed conditions.

For example, a call should not be extended to a pastor contingent on his

achieving particular objectives such as numerical growth, the successful

completion of a capital building project, the utilization of a particular
program, or the attainment of certain budgetary goals.

Ironically, this would seem to reject those conditions and ob-
jectives cited as justification for limiting the Call’s period of time in
the preceding section on “Specialized Fields of Service.” Whether
these conditions and contingencies are defined at the beginning of

2004 Convention Workbook