LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 433

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS : 433

pening anyway and should be regulated for the sake of good order
(1989 Proceedings, 111-14). The process that led up to this action,
incidentally, had by-passed the CTCR—causing the latter to ex-
press official “regret” (April 22, 1989).

We call upon the CTCR to be more intentionally independent of
organizational givens, in order to assert and maintain the sole sway
of the divine gift of truth in His holy Word, as purely confessed in
the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Attachment: The Historic Lutheran Rejection of “Temporary Calls”

1992 Res. 3-09A mandating the study of the Call expressly
stated that this was to be done “utilizing the writings of C. F. W.
Walther (i.e., his book Church and Ministry and essay ‘The Con-
gregation’s Rights [sic] to Choose Its Pastor’ ” (1992 Proceedings,
116). The intent clearly was to take seriously the balanced, historic,
orthodox Lutheran consensus on church and ministry, for the clear
exposition and defense of which Walther is rightly famous. The
CTCR’s document fails to do justice to standard Lutheranism’s re-
jection of “temporary calls,” as the following citations clearly show
(our translations; boldface added).

C.F. W. Walther, Church and Ministry, trans. J. T. Mueller (St
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1987), 311.

Kromayer. “The minister may not be engaged by those who call him
through a contract for certain years or with the reservation to dismiss
the freely called person. God nowhere has granted or permitted
those who call the right to make such a contract. Hence, neither the
one calling nor the one who is called may regard such a call or dis-
missal as divine” (Theologia positivo-polemica, part II, p. 530).

C.F. W. Walther, Amerikanisch-Lutherische Pastoraltheologie
[American-Lutheran Pastoral Theology], 4th ed., 1897, 41-45,
passim.

Especially here in America there exists in many congregations the
custom that preachers are called only temporarily (for a time), that is,
either with the proviso that they may be dismissed at will, or that they
are called only for a certain term, perhaps for one or several years, or
“until notice,” so that they must resign within a fixed time from the day
of the notice; even if all this [includes} the possibility of being elected
again for a new fixed term. However, neither is a congregation enti-
tled to issue such a call, nor is a preacher authorized to accept it.
Such a call is before God neither valid nor legitimate. It is an abuse
[Unsitte]. It conflicts in the first place with the divinity, clearly cer-
tified in God’s Word, of a true call into a preaching office in the
church (Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28; Ps. 68:12; Is. 41:27).
For if God is actually the One who calls preachers, then the congrega-
tions are only the instruments for the selection of the persons for the
work to which the Lord has called them (Acts 13:2). Once this has hap-
pened, the preacher stands in God’s service and office, and no creature

_can then deprive His servant of his office or dismiss him, unless it can
be proved that God Himself deprived him of his office and dismissed
him (Jer. 15:19, cf. Hos. 4:6), in which case the congregation does not
really depose or dismiss the preacher, but only executes the manifest
deposal or dismissal by God. If the congregation does that nonetheless,
then it, the instrument, makes itself the mistress of the office (Mt. 23:8,
cf. 2 Tim. 4:2-3), and interferes with God’s rule and administration,
whether [such congregation] makes arbitrary decisions about this al-
ready before or during the call, or whether it presumes to do so after-
wards. But the preacher who gives a congregation the right to call him
in this way, and to dismiss him at will, thereby makes himself a hireling,
a servant of men. Such a call is not at all that which God has or-
dained in respect of the holy office of preaching, but is an entirely
different matter, which hasn’t got anything to do with it. For it is no
mediate call through the church, but a human contact; it is no life’s
calling, but a passing function outside the divine order; an ecclesi-
astical, thus a human order, or rather an abominable disorder
made contrary to the order of God. It is therefore, as stated before,
without any validity, null and void, and one so called is not to be
regarded as a servant of Christ and of the church. Such a call con-
flicts also, secondly, with the relationship in which congregation and
preacher are to stand towards each other according to God’s Word. It
conflicts firstly with the honour and the obedience, which the hearers
are to show the administrants of the divine office of preaching accord-

ing to God’s Word (Lk. 10:16; 1 Tim. 5:17; 1 Thess. 5:12, 13; 1 Cor.
16:15; Heb. 13:17); for if the hearers really had that alleged plentitude
of power, then it would be fully within their power to withdraw them-
selves from the divinely required observance of that honour and of that
obedience. No less is every sort of a merely temporary call also con-
trary to the faithfulness and constancy until death which God requires of
preachers (1 Pet. 5:1-4; 1 Tim. 4:16; 1 Cor. 4:1 ff.) and contrary as well
to the accounting, which the preacher as guardian over souls will one
day have to render (Heb. 13:17). Finally a temporary call is contrary
both to the practice which the Lord commanded the apostles, and which
they observed, according to which they, namely God’s Spirit through
them, not the hearers, had to determine how long they would and should
remain with a congregation (Lk. 9:4, 5), and also contrary to the prac-
tice of the church in those times when corruption in doctrine, life, order,
and discipline had not set in. That, incidentally, with the existence of
that sort of call the church can nevermore be rightly cared for or gov-
erned, or the right discipline be practiced, or the church be rightly
grounded in the faith and in pious ways, and be propagated, requires no
proof; such a call opens gates and doors to all disorder, confusion,
and all mischief through gainsayers and through men-pleasing and
men-fearing belly-servers.

Finally, Ludwig Hartmann writes: “Here belongs also that contro-
versial question, whether someone may consent to render his service or
official work to the church for certain years. We say no: (1) Because
such a calling impertinently prescribes to God, Who calls, a certain
time, after the lapse of which he will depart from that church, no matter
how it might behave; as it is not the place of a legate to prescribe to his
lord how long he is to represent him. (2) Because fleshly counsels are at
hand, which ought to be far away; for such an one thinks that if things
don’t turn out according to his heart’s desire, if no treasures are to be
gathered or many adversities to be endured, then he will easily disen-
tangle himself from these labyrinths. 3. For the sake of many disadvan-
tages: for if the faithfulness of a pastor were very pleasing to the church,
she would suddenly be robbed of it; also because through such frequent
changes the property of the church is much diminished, as is well
known. If one now asks further, whether it is permitted to call a servant
of the Word under the definite condition of how long, so that when the
patron no longer wishes to hear or tolerate the pastor, he must leave and
wander to some other place? then I answer: We are servants of God and
this office is God’s, to which we are called by God, albeit through men;
this holy work must therefore be handled in a sacred way, but not ac-
cording to human arbitrariness. A shepherd and cowherd people may
hire for a time, and when their service no longer pleases, they may
at a definite time, but not always, dismiss them, if they wish: but so
to treat a shepherd of souls is not within the power of any man. Nor
may the servant of the Word himself accept the holy office in such a
way, unless he wants to become a hireling. Certainly those who
would be thus called would not fulfill the office diligently and faith-
fully, but would become flatterers and say which pleases people, or they
must constantly expect their service to be terminated” (Pastorale
evang., 104).

J. P. Beyer, “Vom Beruf zum Amt der Kirchendiener,’ LCMS
Eastern District Proceedings (1889), 36-37.

This temporary calling is a shameful perversion of the order
which Christ Himself has created in the church. Nowhere is it re-
vealed as the will of God that preachers and teachers should be so en-
gaged that it depends on the good will and the decision of the others
whether they may remain in their office or not. In the most ancient
church one therefore finds not a trace of such temporary employment.
This vice arose only at the time of the Reformation, when some con-
gregations misused the doctrine of the spiritual priesthood [Luther
strongly objected].

As a result of this decided opposition to the excesses of congrega-
tions, we hear no more of such attempts in the Lutheran church for a
long time. Only at the time of the Interim, 1547-52, several south-Ger-
man imperial cities began again to call their preachers for a certain num-
ber of years, and retained the contract system, even though the emer-
gency was ended by the Passau Treaty in 1552. An Opinion of the
Wittenberg Faculty in respect of a school-cantor, from the year 1638,
reads: “The calls to church and schools services, in which one is to give
the other a quarter year’s notice without any other weighty cause, are
entirely disapproved in our Lutheran churches” (Consil. theol. Witeb
III, 55). ... As a result of such forceful testimonies against it, the tem-
porary call disappeared again from Germany, but arose again about 200
years later in America. But also here the Saxons, who had immigrated

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