More LCMS Clergy Rejecting the Authority of the Voters’ Assembly
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

In this article:

  1. Lay people losing their right to vote to CEO pastors after Leadership Training.
  2. Here come the Hyper-Euro-Lutheran Pastors!
  3. What was Missouri’s original position on Voters’ Assemblies?
  4. Where does this leave the lay people?
  5. 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.")


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

September 6, 1999
Revised September 28, 1999