The entire report can be found at:
http://www.lcms.org/president/statements/christcommission.asp
See the companion article on this
topic, What's Right...
The Committee's recommendations avoid the real issue, namely; how did the
Synod's Congregational Voters' Assemblies surrender their authority over
doctrine, practice and worship to the pastors promoting the Church Growth
Movement in the LC-MS?
As a group, these "churchmen" on the Committee have little
concept or appreciation for the Synod's history and official position on the
doctrine and practice of "Church and Ministry" as taught by C. F. W.
Walther.
The Committee writes about theology and practice of the Synod as if these
were not the responsibility of the Congregational Voters' Assemblies, but only
the concern of the Synod and the "right" pastors.
We ask: Who are the worship services for? The Synod, the pastors or the
laity?
Clearly the Church Growth Movement in the Synod is systematically replacing
Voters' Assemblies with Boards of Directors. For example: Doctor Norbert Oesch
of the Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI), endorsed and promoted by the
Synod's Council of District Presidents, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund,
and the LC-MS Foundation, claims that congregational Voter Supremacy is
"inflammatory language" to the clergy. His goal is to retrain 225
LC-MS clergy over a period of 4 years, at a cost of l.25 million dollars a
year, in "Church Growth" Leadership Training techniques. Oesch
openly admits he does not teach Walther's "Church and Ministry" and
polity.
In response to PLI, all the Committee can write is: "The church
follows the culture when . . . the church is operated as a purely secular
corporation, with the pastor functioning as the 'C.E.O,' the elders being
reduced to a Board of Directors, and the congregation treated as workers, all
organized according to a business plan to market a product."
We ask the Committee: If they don't like C.E.O.'s, what structure do they
recommend in place of C.E.O.'s? All we have is their silence. The Committee
writes from the perspective of pastoral authority and paternalism to a laity
they portray as powerless and ineffective spectators.
The Michigan District "committed" itself to eight Core Values in
its 2000 District Convention that contained commitments to "culturally
relevant congregations," and mission congregations, "process
consulting," "healthy congregational systems," and
"affinity-based learning clusters and networking events." The
Committee doesn't offer one practical solution on how to address the above.
They identify problems and they offer correct doctrine, but they never say
what the congregations should do about it.
In the first hundred years of the Synod, the laity were taught exactly what
to do in their congregational Voters' Assemblies by Walther, Fritz, Mundinger,
Pieper, and as detailed in the "Abiding Word." But, that Synod was
organized and growing and this Synod is simply lost in the confusion of a
polity vacuum.
By presenting this flawed document, the Committee has actually increased
the congregations' vulnerability to the Church Growth Movement by never
identifying the only approved and historic structure for LC-MS congregations,
namely, Supreme Voters' Assemblies.
They boldly endorse the name Lutheran and the Creeds, issues that were
confronted in the 1995 and 1998 Conventions. In their proposed resolution they
write:
"Whereas, The Church Growth materials, as well as in actual practice,
there is a confusion of the Priesthood of All Believers with the Office of the
Holy Ministry, e.g., the pastor as manager and organizer, a misunderstanding
of the Call, and a misunderstanding of Christian vocation (Evangelism and
Church Growth, CTCR 1987; pp. 42-43);"
We ask: "Confusion based on what?" Would the Committee please
name the quotations from Walther, Luther, or the Confessions that would direct
the congregational Voters' Assembly as to exactly what action they should take
to solve the problems of Church Growth?
It is all a little too late to close the barn door. The Committee speaks
about a Synod of 2.5 million. When the Synod originally asked the Committee to
give a report in 1995, it used to be a Synod of over 2.6 million baptized. By
the time the Synod realizes the Committee failed to identify a practical
course of action, it will be a Synod reduced to 2.4 or 2.3 million. The
Synod's reluctance to encourage the laity to involve themselves in maintaining
the correct worship and practice in their congregations through Voters'
Assemblies is a virtual death wish for the LC-MS, a church body founded on
congregational polity.
The Committee can't comprehend how or why the Synod's founder, C. F. W.
Walther has been proven to be the greatest Lutheran Evangelist in American
history, not only because he taught correctly about Law and Gospel, but also
because he understood how to organize congregations with the doctrine of
"Church and Ministry." Doctor Veith, an excellent scholar on the
Committee, has only exposed his lack of knowledge as to our Synod's history
and its congregational polity.
Dr. Veith: We wonder if the other Committee members even bothered to tell
you that the Synod is not Church? The congregations and the lay people are the
church!
The Committee clearly doesn't view Voters' Assemblies as an administrative
body in the Synod, assigned to judge doctrine or as the final authority in the
congregation. From the Synod's Seminaries and District Offices' perspective,
the disadvantages of lay involvement have obviously out weighed the
advantages. Who needs all those people who just get in the way of our plans?
In an obvious act of deception, the Committee even quotes C. F. W.
Walther's, "The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Congregation
Independent of the State," where he writes: "A congregation should
do its share that the Gospel may be brought to those sitting in darkness and
the shadow of death . . ." Is that it? The entire book is about Voters'
Assemblies judging doctrine, worship and practice and how they should do it,
but the reader would never learn that from this quote, taken out of context.
Sadly and intentionally, the entire report does not address the context of the
local LC-MS congregation.
In classic hyper-euro-Lutheran style, the Committee writes 502 words in
"III" of Part 1, 71 words in "I" of Part 2, defending the
Office of the Ministry and includes the subject in their proposed resolution
without defending the authority of the Congregation in its Voters' Assemblies
to judge doctrine, worship and practice. It is as if they didn't know Luther
wrote: "Reason and Cause from Scripture that the Christian Assembly or
Congregation Has the Right and the Authority to Judge All Doctrine and to
Call, Install, and Depose Teachers." (Luther's Work, Volume 39, American
Edition, pages 305-314)
They also completely ignore Walther when he writes: "In public church
affairs nothing should be concluded without a vote and consent of the
congregation." (Form of the Christian Congregation, C. F. W. Walther,
CPH, St. Louis, 1989, p. 48)
We offer Luther's fist pounding on the table at the Papacy that might also
give the Committee a knock in the head with these words:
"The keys belong to the whole church and to each of its members, both
as regard their authority and their various uses. Otherwise we do violence to
the words of Christ, in which he speaks to all without qualification or
limitation: 'Let him be to you,' and 'You will have gained your brother,' and
'Whatever you,' etc. And the words, which were spoken alone to Peter, 'I will
give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' here find their confirmation.
This word also, 'If two of you agree on earth,' and 'Where two are gathered in
my name there am I in the midst of them'" [Matt. 18:19,20]. LW40:27
The Committee backs into the same hierarchialism it condemns in the Church
Growth C.E.O.s. To the Committee's unconfessional bias for clergy hierarchy
and selective quotations from the Lutheran Confessions ignoring the authority
of LC-MS congregations, we offer the following corrective from the Confessions
and the Bible.
The Confessions teach that the local congregation is supreme over the
pastor. (See Trig. 507, ". the church is above the ministers" also
Trig. 511, "Christ gives supreme and final jurisdiction to the
Church" also Matt. 18:17, Col. 4:17, 1Peter 5:1-3, 2Cor. 8:8)
The Confessions teach that the sheep judge their shepherd in all doctrine.
(See Trig. 525 par.72, ". . . the churches are in duty bound before God,
. . . because Paul, Gal. 1: 7ff, enjoins that bishops who teach and defend a
godless doctrine and godless services should be regarded as accursed,"
also Matt. 7:15-23, 1John 4:1, 1Cor. 10:15, Matt. 23:10, 1Thess. 5:1, Mark 10:
42-44, Acts 17:11, 2Pet. 2:1, 1Cor.14: 29, Rev. 2:2)
The Confessions teach that the congregation and not the Synod is
"church," hence synods are human organizations. (See Trig. 511 par.
24, "Likewise Christ gives supreme and final jurisdiction to the Church,
when He says: 'Tell it unto the Church.'" also AC VII & VIII Trig.
page 47, "The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel
is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered." also
Pieper, Vol. III, 421; also Preamble, LCMS Constitution, page 8, "Reason
for the Forming of a Synodical Union: 1. The example of the apostolic church,
Acts 15:1-31" also "For wherever the Church [local congregation] is,
there is the authority [command] to administer the Gospel . . . Just as in a
case of necessity even a layman absolves, and becomes the minister and pastor
of another; as Augustine narrates the story of two Christians in a ship, one
of whom baptized the catechumen, who after baptism then absolved the
baptizer." SA Par. 67, Trig. page 523)