In this article:
- Lay people losing their right to vote to CEO pastors after Leadership
Training.
- Here come the Hyper-Euro-Lutheran Pastors!
- What was Missouri’s original position on Voters’ Assemblies?
- Where does this leave the lay people?
- Quotations from Hyper-Euro-Lutheran pastors who reject the Biblical
authority of Voters’ Assemblies as the final tribunal in congregational matters and
excommunication.
(The anti-Voters' Assembly hymn verses are clever.)
1. LAY PEOPLE LOSING THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE TO CEO PASTERS AFTER LEADERSHIP
TRAINING.
The leadership of the LCMS has set in motion a plan to
disenfranchise the Voters’ Assemblies of the LCMS. The reason is simple. They believe
dictatorship is more efficient and cost effective than congregational voting. Growing
numbers of LCMS pastors regard themselves as CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) who operate
with Boards of Directors promoted by Church Growth and Leadership Training.
The Lutheran Church Extension Fund is financing the elimination of LCMS Voter’s
Assemblies. The Lutheran Church Extension Fund, according to Vice President Victor Bryant,
will be giving Dr. Norbert Oesch $340,000.00 between 1997 and 2002 to operate the Patoral
Leadership Institute (PLI). Aid Association For Lutherans is reported to have given at
least $100,000.00 and Rich Bimler of the Wheatridge Ministries (formally known as the
Wheatridge Foundation) has given $30,000.00.
Pastors hand picked by the Council of District Presidents are being retrained by PLI in
Church Growth/Leadership Training marketing techniques. PLI is teaching pastors how to
change from a traditional information-fact-doctrine based-ministry to a
motivational-market driven-relational-Harvard Business School philosophy style of
ministry. The result is that once the new congregational constitutions are in place
Voters’ Assemblies will meet once or twice a year (if at all) and individual lay
people will no longer be able to bring a motion from the floor. The right for a specified
number of lay people to call a Voters’ Assembly is also removed. The congregation is
run by the CEO and the Board of Directors. PLI was not approved by the LCMS Convention nor
the Board for Higher Education.
Bryant reports that Seminary President John Johnson and the 35 District Presidents
strongly support PLI.
Bryant also reports that "in January 1998, a meeting with PLI board members was
held at Dr. Barry's request. Attending with Dr. Barry was Dr. Walt Rosin, Secretary: John
Schuelke, Administrative Officer; and executive officers from Congregational Services,
Board for Higher Education, Human Care, Missions and virtually every department interested
in the ministry of PLI. After the purpose and history of PLI was explained, all present
supported the concept and the administrative officer praised LCEF for initiating the
project."
2. HERE COME THE HYPER-EURO-LUTHERAN PASTORS
While an estimated 2,000 of the 5,700 LCMS pastors support the
Church Growth Movement and Leadership Training at least 500 LCMS pastors now reject
Walther’s concept of congregational government and the authority of the Voters’
Assembly as the final tribunal. They also place the authority for excommunication with the
pastor rather than the Voters’ Assembly. They are retreating to Stephanism and the
position of Walther’s chief opponent Wilhlem Loehe, known as Hyper-Euro-Lutheranism.
In 1847, Loehe rejected the entire concept of Voters’ Assemblies and
congregational rule. "Wilhelm Loehe was not happy with the constitution of the
Missouri Synod. Loehe felt that suffrage on the part of the congregation was nonapostolic
and down-right dangerous." ("Ministry in Missouri Until 1962" by Dr. John
C. Wohlrabe, Jr., 1992, page 8).
After Loehe and Grabau met on this issue they both wanted Walther to view the authority
of the pastoral office in regard to the Voters’ Assembly as an open question.
"Yet, this was not to be. Walther believed that both Scripture and the confessions
were clear on the matter and that any compromise would be a denial of Scriptural doctrine
and would ultimately affect the teaching of justification by grace through faith. In
August, 1853, Wilhelm Loehe broke relations with the Missouri Synod." (Wohlrabe, page
10)
"Loehe called the government setup of the Fort Wayne constitutional convention (of
the Missouri Synod) American mob rule." ("Government in the Missouri
Synod", by Dr. Carl S. Mundinger, CPH, St. Louis, 1947, page 200.)
The proponents of Hyper-Euro-Lutheranism, such as Rev. Eric Stefanski argue the same
position as Loehe and Grabau above, namely that anyone who insists on Voters’
Assemblies in the LCMS is making an issue out of something that is not required. His
position is identical with that of the CEO pastors except for a theological rather than a
business reason. He writes in his Administrative Note on Cat41’s Table Talk:
Quotation removed per author's request.
I included at the end of this article just a dozen of the hundreds
of quotes in my files from pastors who believe Walther, the founder of the LCMS, made a
mistake in teaching that Voters’ are the final tribunal in the Congregation. The song
verses against Voters’ Assemblies are rather clever.
3. WHAT WAS MISSOURI’S ORIGINAL POSITION ON VOTERS’ ASSEMBLIES?
For its hundredth anniversary in 1947 the Lutheran Church-Missouri
Synod published a book titled "Government in the Missouri Synod" by Dr. Carl S.
Mundinger. Just a few quotes from Mundinger puts the original position of the LCMS into
perspective.
"There are several factors which make connection between the genesis of
Missouri’s polity and existing American democratic theory rather improbable. The
resemblance between the theory of congregational supremacy and American popular
sovereignty is more apparent than real. Only male communicant members of the church who
reached their twenty-first year had the right to vote. Furthermore, matters of doctrine
and conscience which assumed great importance in the immigrant Church were not subject to
popular vote, but were decided on the sole authority of the Scriptures. In such matters
the Word of God hovered as a supreme authority over the congregation and Synod. This
authority, be it remembered, was wielded officially and effectively by the pastor and by
the Synodical officials. In a sermon delivered upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the founding of the Missouri Synod as the jubilee convention, St. Louis,
1872, Walther said, ‘Reverence and implicit obedience are due the ministry when the
pastor teaches the Word of God.’" ("Government in the Missouri Synod,"
by Dr. Carl S. Mundinger, CPH, St. Louis, 1947 Page 201
"As to the genesis of the Missouri Synod’s decentralized polity it is rather
doubtful whether America contributed very much more than the stage upon which
Luther’s theories of church government were put into practice."
("Government in the Missouri Synod," by Dr. Carl S. Mundinger, CPH, St. Louis,
1947 Page 212)
"Walther accepted principles of church government which his lay opponents had
gathered from the writings of Luther. To these he added from Luther certain provisions
which safeguarded the dignity of the ministerial office: his transfer theory, the doctrine
of the divinity of the call, the absolute authority of the Word of God, and permanence of
tenure." ("Government in the Missouri Synod," by Dr. Carl S. Mundinger,
CPH, St. Louis, 1947 Page 213)
"By putting real power into the laymen’s hands the founders of the Missouri
Synod nurtured and developed a sturdy and informed laity. The laymen learned by doing. The
difficult problem of teaching men and women who had been brought up in the State Church of
Germany the task of paying for the maintenance of the Church was solved by giving laymen
the privilege and the duty of making important decisions in the Church....The zeal which
the early Missouri Synod laymen showed for their Church in that they attended meeting
after meeting was produced, no doubt, in part by the fact that these men knew that their
decisions were final." ("Government in the Missouri Synod," by Dr. Carl S.
Mundinger, CPH, St. Louis, 1947 Page 218-219)
4. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE LAY PEOPLE?
Where does this leave the LCMS lay people who want to call a pastor
who teaches what Mundinger writes about? How will they know if they are not calling a
pastor whose heart beats like a CEO and owes his allegiance to the Board of Directors or a
pastor whose ecclesiology resembles the Vatican? Congregations will have a slim chance of
calling a pastor who supports the traditional position of the LCMS. They will have
difficulty finding a pastor on the list from the District Office or a graduate from either
Seminary who understands and supports Walther’s "Church and Ministry." The
lay people are just going to have to do their own examination of the candidates or expect
their church constitution to be rewritten in a manner in which they may not understand and
later regret.
5. QUOTATIONS FROM HYPER-EURO-LUTHERAN PASTORS AND THEIR LAITY WHO REJECT THE
BIBLICAL AUTHORITY OF VOTERS’ ASSEMBLIES AS THE FINAL TRIBUNAL IN CONGREGATIONAL
MATTERS AND EXCOMMUNICATION.
Quotations removed per author's request.
(Editor’s note: The above quotation is utter nonsense. On
the very page quoted above Walther writes, "Here Christ clearly gives the supreme
jurisdiction to the church or congregation, as our Confessions say, and He desires that a
sinner in a congregation be regarded as a heathen and a tax collector and that the
dreadful judgment of excommunication be pronounced on him only after manifold private
admonitions and the public admonition before and by the congregation have proved
themselves fruitless, so that the congregation has unanimously decided to excommunicate
him through its pastor.")