Church and Ministry in the LCMS - Resolution 7-17A
What does this mean?
Issue # 4 - Pulpit Deserters
May 21, 2002
According to my count (no claim to being exactly exact, but close) there are 1005 (1005) men listed under the heading "Ordained Ministers" in the 2002 Lutheran Annualwho are not pastors of congregations. I did not include in my count those listed as emeritus (EM).
This means there are 1005 (1005!) misters roaming around in and out of Synod play-acting as reverends and with nothing about them to legitimize their being labeled, in accordance with Synod's official position on church and ministry, ordained ministers. They have resigned the authority to publicly administer the "peculiar" church power to forgive sins conferred on them by the election and call of a local congregation, ordination in their case now has absolutely no significance, they are, one and all, laymen who falsely and fraudulently refer to themselves as Reverend or Pastor or even.........Bishop (?).
On page 128 (Res. 2-04) of our 2001 convention's Convention Proceedingsit is reported that in 1997 there were 971 congregations in Synod suffering vacant pulpits (there are no doubt more by now but let's stick with the reported figures). That's 971 vacant pulpits, vacated by 1005 (1005!!) men we've trained specifically to occupy them but who have deserted their charge and escaped to greener fields.
But let us give a benefit of the doubt to this last and excuse for the moment those from the list of 1005 (1005!!!) who have resigned the authority to publicly administer the office of the keys conferred on them by a congregation to become district presidents or seminary professors or be involved in the fieldwith the Board for Mission Services.
Here I count 120 (more or less). This leaves us with 885 (885!!!) deserting wannabes-but-don't-wannabe, 885 virtual laymen who affect all the ecclesiastical trappings of a pastor when it's to their advantage to do so, discarding them when it's not. Out on the golf course or the lake or the tavern, the office, maybe even at voters assembly meetings, it's casuals and Bill, Bob, Tom or John. At the joint Ascension Day or Reformation Day services, the convocation, the seminar, the convention it's gorgeous robes, round collars and Reverend or Pastor so-and-so. On payday, a.k.a. housing allowance day, it's always Reverend.
Synod is not an off-shore corporate operation organized to legalize the cheating of Caesar. It is not some shady outfit in business to supply ego certificates designed to hang on the office wall to bolster ones personal prestige. It is a corporation organized to assist our congregations and pastors, when called upon to do so, in implementing the God-mandated imperative of telling the good news of the forgiveness of sins to all the world by means of His Word. But Synod............no, we, the members of its congregations, along with our pastors, are being used to rob both Caesar and God of their due. The first is bad, the last intolerable.
That a synod is not a church, that Jesus established a special office of the ministry when He called the apostles, that the authority (office) of the ministry is that of forgiving sins by publicly administering the office of the keys by means of the Word and the sacraments, and that this authority can be granted (conferred) only by means of the election and call of a local congregation of believers are all principles grounded firmly on God's Word.
Taken all together these are the principles that comprise the Missouri Synod's official position on church and ministry, a position rejected by all those in Synod who hold that a man is in the office of the ministry by virtue of his ordination and remains in the office even when he deserts his congregational charge. To maintain these last is to adopt the official position of the Wisconsin Synod, which, giving glory to the faulty reasoning of men, robs God of His due.