Posted on 07/13/2004 5:35:20 PM PDT by sauerkraut
Shortly after noon on Tuesday, July 13, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in convention declared congregations and pastors unable to bring charges of false doctrine or aberrant practice in any meaningful sense. With the adoption of Resolution 8-01A, the sole authority to press charges was placed into the hands of the District Presidents and Synodical President alone. The process involved with the adoption of this resolution is that a complaint will only be officially brought by a District President, that it willthen be heard by a group appointed by the District President and that if the District President doesn't like the outcome, it can be referred to a panel of three other District Presidents.
As one seminary professor said during Saturday's Floor Committee open hearings, Rome would blush to hear of such power being placed into the hands of a single group.
The history of the LCMS has come full circle; we were begun with the removal of our single bishop, and we have now created a whole council of bishops. This makes the darkness of seminex a mere dusk.
please don't take this the wrong way, but as I recall it, Luther considered the episcopal authority to rest with the senior pastor in each congregation. Did anyone bother to point that out during the debate?
History doesn't impress the Jesus First/Pope Jerry I machine. As he has said, "This isn't your grandfather's LCMS," so he really couldn't care less what Luther had to say way back in the 16th century. In the immortal words of Flip Wilson, this is "The Church of What's Happenin'Now!"
In essence, all pastors with a call are bishops and all have powers to rebuke and reproach. We create certain offices for pure oversight only because no one pastor can keep an eye on everyone and do what he is called to do as well. The powers of oversight are human-given powers. What has happened is that they have taken the oversight functions, which are human creations, and have created a doctrine from them. You should know better than anyone about how that can happen.
Is that like Gollum, we likesss them and we adoptsss them?
I have to admit I got a grin out of your reply. Our bishops exist as a separate ecclesiastical order, and our polity is significantly different in these areas. A bishop me be deposed (i.e. thrown out of office) or suppressed (restricted from exercising his authority as a bishop) but he still remains a bishop for life. While there can be problems with retired wackos like john spong; good bishops (such as those who held a joint confirmation service in Ohio, so that conservatives wouldn't have to deal with their heretical diocesan bishop, earlier this year, can be a real blessing.
That being said, however, we have never constrained the ability to bring presentments (i.e. charges in ecclesiastical court) to the episcopal level. Anybody, lay or clergy, can bring such charges; although usually it's a group of folks, rather than an individual. The way our heretics got around this was to subvert a large enough section of the episcopate and clergy that those who chose the trial courts could avoid chosing any orthodox Anglicans if they chose to do so...and they have done just that on several occasions.
What it appears you have going on in LCMS is a more or less naked grab at power. One point I haven't seen mentioned so far has been that since your district presidents and so on are only elected for limited periods of time. When are the first of those functioning under this new policy going to stand for election? Where I would suggest you need to exercise caution would be if/when there is a move to extend their time in office without bringing up another election...at that point I would submit you, or at least they, are perhaps bordering on not being Lutheran anymore; no?
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