Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1973 · 50th Convention › Sheet 493
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Sheet 493

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

MINISTRY IN RELATION TO CHURCH 461

The Call to the Ministry in Apostolic Times

While Holy Scripture does not set forth an explicit
and detailed doctrine of the call into the Ministry, it does
secasionally speak of such a call. The twelve apostles
were chosen and called by Jesus Himself. St. Paul was
salled by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. In a
vision, the disciple Ananias, who was to baptize Paul,
was told by the Lord of Paul's call: “He is a chosen
instrument of Mine to carry My name before Gentiles
and kings and the sons of Israel’ (Acts 9:15). In his
epistles, Paul frequently refers to his eall (ef. Rom. 1:1;
1 Cor. 1:1; 2 Cor. 1:1; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; Col. 1:1; 1 Tim.
1:1; 2 Tim. 1:1). During a worship service in the church
at Antioch, Paul and Barnabas were called to carry the
Gospel to the Gentiles when the Holy Spirit said: ‘Set
apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which
I have called them” (Acts 13:2). The elders of the church
at Ephesus were reminded by Paul that they must watch
over and feed the church of the Lord, because the Holy
Ghost had made them guardians of this flock. (Acts
20:28)

How this call came, in every instance, to those who
became ministers in the church in apostolic times Holy
Scripture does not say. Some may well have been chosen
directly by the church, while others, with the consent
and approval of the church, were appointed by the
apostles. (Cf. Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5)

In whatever manner the call to service in the Gospel
may have been issued and received, the person so called
was held accountable to his Lord, in whose service he
stood. “Obey your leaders,” the writer to the Hebrews
admonishes his readers, ‘“‘and submit to them; for they
are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have
to give account” (Heb. 13:17). St. James admonishes his
readers, “Let not many of you become teachers, my
brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be
judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1)

Ordination in Apostolic Times

Just as there are, in the technical sense, no words of
institution for the Ministry in the New Testament, so
also there is no record of an institution or ordination to
the Ministry. There are, however, references to the lay-
ing on of hands, a practice that may be understood as
a form of ordination. The laying on of hands, however,
did not originate with the apostles, having been prac-
ticed already in ancient Israel. The children of Israel
were commanded to lay their hands on the Levites ‘“‘that
it may be theirs to do the service of the Lord” (Num.
8:9-11). Moses was commanded to lay his hands on
Joshua, the son of Nun: ‘You shall commission him in
their [the people’s] sight. You shall invest him with
some of your authority, that all the congregation of
Israel may obey.” (Num. 27:18-20)

The apostles were therefore following an Old Testa-
ment example when they “ordained,” that is, when they
“prayed and laid their hands upon, the seven men who
were chosen by the church at Jerusalem to minister to

the widows (Acts 6:6). There are other New Testament
examples of such “ordination.” (Cf. Acts 13:1-3; 1 Tim.
4:14; 1 Tim. 5:22; and 2 Tim. 1:6)

From these examples it is clear that in Biblical times
there was a form of ordination in which chosen men
were publicly and solemnly charged through the laying
on of hands with specific functions and duties, at times
political, at times spiritual. Along with the specific func-
tions and duties of the office, there was bestowed au-
thority commensurate with those functions and duties.
St. Paul, for example, wrote to two men he had “or-
dained”: “(Command and teach these things. Let no one
despise your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12) and “Rebuke them
sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.” (Titus 1:13)

Ministry and Ordination in the Post-Apostolic and
Reformation Church

The Ministry, and ordination to the Ministry, con-
tinued as a matter of course in the Christian church
after the days of the apostles. In the Western church,
out of which the Lutheran church came at the time of
the Reformation, there developed in time seven orders
of clerics, all of whom were ordained. Ordination by the
laying on of hands was in time elevated to one of the
seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. (See
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Twenty-
third Session, Chapters I-IV, and Canons 1-8)

The time of the Reformation saw the pot which had
boiled ominously during the Middle Ages and the
scholastic period exploding with elemental force. Various
movements took form. On the one hand, the so-called
left wing of the Reformation, under leaders like Thomas
Muenzer and Menno Simons, generally had no specifi-
cally called and ordained ministers, but depended on
charismatic leaders. Men preached as they believed they
were moved by the Spirit.

On the other hand, the Reformation churches that
followed Martin Luther, as well as the Reformed
churches begun by Huldreich Zwingli and continued
under John Calvin and others, took a middle road. The
church of the Augsburg Confession rejected both the
teaching of the Roman Catholic Church about ministry
and ordination as well as the unstructured way of the
left wing of the Reformation. It wanted to retain a rightly
called and publicly ordained Ministry.

Statements of the Lutheran Confessions on Ministry and
Ordination

The Augsburg Confession states: “To obtain such
faith God instituted the office of the ministry, that is,
provided the Gospel and the sacraments” (AC, V, p. 31).
Concerning the call to the Ministry, the same Confession
states: “It is taught among us that nobody should publicly
teach or preach or administer the sacraments in the
church without a regular call.” (AC, XIV, p. 36)

The papalist theologians who examined the Augsburg
Confession noted correctly that the Confession did not
stress or even call for ordination. In the Confutation,
which was the Roman Catholic answer to the Augsburg