LUTHER, WALTHER, CHURCH AND MINISTRY

You have asked me to talk on the topic of “Luther, Walther, Church and Ministry.” Church and ministry. Now why would you want me to talk about that? Church and ministry? Surely these matters were settled during the Reformation and by our Lutheran Confessional writings. Yes. And what about the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and our doctrine of church and ministry? Surely C.F.W. Walther addressed this teaching in his Altenburg Debate with Adolph Marbach and his position, fleshed out during later years, became the official position of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Yes. And is still the official position of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod today! Yes. Well, then, why do we need to keep talking about the doctrine of church and ministry?

I’ll tell you why. In the book of Revelation, chapter 12, we read the following words:

And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:13-17)

Here we have a description of the end times. We are in those times. Here we have a description of Satan persistently attacking the church and seeking to destroy the church. We are that church, all of us who believe in Jesus. The church will always be the focus of Satan’s attacks until the day Jesus returns. Therefore, the church should not expect peace. We are the church militant. Jesus makes it clear that suffering will at times be intimately connected with our Christian faith. In other words, the church will be attacked precisely because it is the Church. In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus says to all who were listening, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)

The Church is always under attack. And Satan attacks the church by attacking its faith and in attacking its faith, he attacks you. One of the most effective ways in which he assaults the church is by challenging the church’s understanding of what the church is. What is it that makes you church; what is it that defines you as God’s child; how is the church created; from what does the church live; just what is the church? These are questions that Satan throws before the Christians of every generation to challenge their identity, their certainty and their faith. Satan’s attack upon the church is unrelenting and it will continue until the day Jesus returns. The dragon will always be pursuing the woman and will without pause make war against her offspring, those “who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” So it will be until the day of judgment. In the meantime, it is our comfort that God has prepared a place for the church where she can be nourished. But this place is in the wilderness. And so the church remains the church militant, the church attacked and persecuted, the church suffering. At the same time this persecuted and suffering church is the church God loves and forgives and protects and feeds until the day Jesus comes to transform the church from the church militant into the church triumphant. Here we have a great paradox: the church is at war and the church is at peace until Jesus returns.

Because God has established the office of the holy ministry for the sake of the church, to feed and nourish the church through the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, that faith may be born and grow and the church may flourish, Satan challenges the church’s understanding of the office of the ministry. Who may hold the pastoral office; who may not hold this office; what do pastors do; how does one become a pastor; just what is a pastor? These also are questions that Satan throws before the Christians of every generation because if the Augsburg Confession is correct when it says that God established the office of the ministry in order that we might obtain faith through the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, then Satan must attack the doctrine of the ministry. In attacking the ministry, which God has established for the benefit of the church, he attacks the church. And this attack upon the church’s understanding of the holy ministry will also be unrelenting and will continue until Jesus’ return. It must be so or Satan must cease to be Satan.

Therefore Christians will always be occupied with questions about church and ministry. That’s simply the way it is? And even though the questions about church and ministry have been answered, and answered well, in previous generations, Satan never gives up. In every age he thrusts new questions before the church to challenge again her understanding of what the ministry is and what the church is. And so it is today.

Do we see the signs of his activity today in attacking the church and her ministry? We can hardly miss them. Consider, for example, the practice of women’s ordination. May women be ordained as pastors? I do not intend to examine this question thoroughly today. This question would need to be address by a thorough exegetical study and that is not the task that was assigned to me. For a thorough treatment I would recommend people to the book recently published by Concordia Publishing House entitled, Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Biblical, Lutheran Perspective.

For our purposes today, I will simply state my position on the matter and the historic position of the Christian Church. The Bible’s position on the ordination of women to the pastoral office is unambiguous. Women may not be pastors. The Bible’s teaching is clear, and it is not difficult to understand. But it is not in agreement with our current culture’s understanding of human rights and equality between the sexes. Therefore, the lucid, unmistakable testimony of the Holy Scripture must give way to culture’s god and be explained away or revised or ignored or rejected. Under no circumstances can God’s Word be permitted to have prominence over the word of man. Thus, just as man himself has evolved over millions of years, so also his theology evolves, becoming ever more enlightened and the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures must simply give way before the wisdom of the age and the Holy Spirit must bow before the more advanced and superior intellect of the spirit of our culture.

Besides, pressures flowing from a pluralistic mentality which would deny the possibility of any group’s claim to possession of absolute truth dictate that the church must be open to alternate understandings of her historic teachings and although she is permitted to assert that she possesses truths, these truths must not be advanced as exclusive in any way of those “truths” that contradict them. Thus, Pilate’s rhetorical question, “What is truth?” becomes the defining truth of the age.

It is, therefore, not on the basis of Scripture but in spite of Scripture’s clear testimony that the practice of women’s ordination has deluged the world of Lutheranism today. Thus, the vast majority of Lutheran World Federation member churches ordain women. So-called Lutheran churches in Europe, in Africa, in Asia ordain women. In North America the largest church calling itself Lutheran ordains women. And all this contrary to the Word of God.

But it does not stop there. You see, error is never content to gain an equal standing with the truth. Charles Porterfield Krauth, in his book, The Conservative Reformation, contains a very helpful description of what happens when error is permitted to continue in the church without correction.

When error is admitted into the church, it will be found that the stages of its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: You need not be afraid of us; we are few, and weak; only let us alone; we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions. Indulged in this for a time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are two balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the church. Truth and error are two co-ordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it, and to make them skilful in combating it.[1]

And so it has happened in Scandinavia that those who hold to the historic position of the Christian Church on women’s ordination are being persecuted today. In Sweden, men who are opposed to women’s ordination cannot be ordained into the Church of Sweden. I personally have met a number of men who have finished their seminary training but are forbidden ordination on the basis of their conviction that women may not be pastors. In 1958, when women’s ordination was approved in the Church of Sweden, those who were opposed by conscience to the ordination of women were promised that their position would always be tolerated even though it was a minority position. But in 1982, the so-called conscience clause was dropped. Finally in 1993 acceptance of female pastors was finally demanded from all those who wished to be pastors in the Church of Sweden. And to make sure that men do not enter the ministry of the Church of Sweden who are opposed to women’s ordination, candidates for the office of the pastoral ministry may be required to receive the Lord’s Supper from the hands of an ordained woman. Fredrik Sidenvall describes the oppression of orthodox pastors in the Church of Sweden.

It should be clear to anyone that the legal pressure is massive on the… male pastors who do not accept the ordination of women. The stories from the pastoral institutes of the Church where the candidates are trained after university, is horrifying: Stories of informers and psychological torture. There are sad experiences of highly talented pastors who have been stopped in their career, attacked from bishops, parish boards and the mass media. There actually is a form of gray martyrdom going on, where people’s family life, their economic life, their mental and physical health have suffered badly.[2]

Nor is this confession confined to Sweden. I was at a conference of the North European Luther Academy this summer on the west coast of Norway. One of the pastors from Finland told us of an elderly Finnish woman who did not wish to be served by a woman “pastor.” She asked her bishop if she could have permission to be served by a male pastor instead even though this would not be in conformity with parish boundaries. Her bishop gave permission for her to be served by a male pastor outside of her own parish. But she was accused of breaking the law that accords equal rights to women and was fined 15,000 euros, approximately $22,000.00, which she has no choice but to pay. If she cannot come up with the money, theoretically the state could force her to sell her home to pay the fine. Pastor Halvar Sandell, who told us this story, indicated that a fund has been set up to help her pay the fine. There have been other cases reported in Finland where the police were called to deal with pastors who would not participate in a divine service in which a woman was the presiding clergyperson.

Moving from Scandinavia to Africa, Dr. Walter Obare, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya told me personally that his church was offered money by a Lutheran World Federation official if his church would consent to the ordination of women. It appears that if it is not possible to persuade Christians with the words of Scripture, the LWF is willing to use money to accomplish its ends. Who would have thought that doctrine could be bought? Dr. Obare, faithful Lutheran that he is, rejected the LWF offer.

But it is not only in the area of women’s ordination that we find an assault on the office of the ministry today. A few years ago in the Lutheran Church of Australia a new policy was adopted that provides for congregations to evaluate the ministry of the pastor every five years. If the congregation is dissatisfied with the pastor for some reason, they can request that he be transferred to another congregation.

And in our own Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod we have not been untouched by issues calling into question our historic stand on the office of the ministry as defined by Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. Particularly troubling has been Resolution 305B that was passed by the synodical convention in Wichita in 1989, a resolution providing for laymen to preach and administer the sacraments when pastors are unavailable to do so. Although the resolution in its suggestions appears to address a practical problem and to offer a practical solution, it runs counter to what our Lutheran Confessions teach. Augsburg Confession, Article XIV, under the title of “Order in the Church,” states, “It is taught among us that nobody should publicly teach or administer the sacraments in the church without a regular call.”[3]

The question is, “What happens to our teaching on the divine call?” These men are licensed by District Presidents to preach and administer the Sacraments when pastors are unavailable to do so for a period of time. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, it does not bring our synod into conformity with the teaching of the Augsburg Confession. These laymen, after all, do not receive a divine call from a congregation to preach and administer the sacraments but are only licensed to do so by a District President. In providing a rationale for the adoption of Resolution 305B, Dr. Sam Nafzger stated the following:

We have many dedicated lay ministers who for up to 20 years have been asked to carry out a ministry of Word and Sacrament without recognition or supervision, without roster or doctrinal oversight. If we want to undermine Art. XIV of the Augsburg Confession, the surest way is to leave things the way they are, and to have no accountability or supervision. The adoption of Res. 3-05 does not initiate a single new practice in the doctrine of the ministry of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. It will, however, initiate proper supervision of those practices which we have long recognized as being consistent with our understanding of the doctrine of the ministry so that we may all together tell everyone what He has done.[4]

Dr. Nafzger is certainly correct when he talks about the dedicated service of laymen. He is also correct when he says that Resolution 305B does not initiate new practice. He is also correct when he states that the resolution will provide for better supervision. But he is engaging in a major begging of the question when he states that the practice of laymen carrying out Word and Sacrament ministry is “consistent with our understanding of the doctrine of the ministry.” The entire debate at the Wichita Convention was precisely over that question.

But the decision in Wichita is not the only issue troubling the Missouri Synod. In addition, certain of our practices seem to call into question our understanding either of the nature of a divine call into the pastoral office or of the nature of the office itself. For example, when I was asked to serve as Director of Concordia Historical Institute in 1995, I received a document indicating that I had been extended a divine call to serve as Director of Concordia Historical Institute. At the same time, I was informed that my position as Director could be terminated at any time by the Board of Governors –with or without cause. Historically, the Lutheran Church has recognized three valid reasons for revoking a pastor’s call: 1. The teaching of false doctrine; 2. An immoral life; 3. Refusal or inability to perform the duties of the office. But I was told that I had a divine call that could be terminated at any time by the Board with or without cause. And I had to ask myself, “What kind of a divine call is this? Is this a divine call?” Furthermore, I think we need to question the validity of a call to a synodical position which does not require the individual to preach or teach in the church or to administer the Sacraments. At least, we need to question whether this is a divine call.

Many of us have heard of instances in which pastors of congregations have been removed from their office even though they had done nothing wrong, even though the congregations had no scriptural justification for removing them. What effect does this practice have on our doctrine of the divine call? Or has the divine call among us become simply a divine suggestion? Of course, it should not be surprising to discover that in our market driven age congregations are acting more and more on the basis of market driven models of leadership and organizational structures. Thus, if a corporation can fire its executive for not reaching company expectations, surely a congregation can do the same with a pastor. Once again the culture sets the standard and the church adopts it.

Nor is the confusion at an end. I think it very likely that Lutheran churches will follow the example recently set by the Episcopal church in consecrating a homosexual bishop. In the Church of Norway bishops are currently debating whether or not the church should recognize homosexual unions as valid before God and the church. The ELCA is considering the same matter. It is one thing for the state to recognize a homosexual union as valid before God. This is an assault on the welfare of society and the family. But when the church does this, it is done in the name of God and is potentially far more damaging to the welfare of souls and of Christianity as a whole. If the church declares that homosexual unions are valid before God, there is little to prevent it from authorizing the ordination of homosexuals to the pastoral office. If homosexuality is not wrong and homosexual unions are not wrong, why would it be wrong to accept practicing homosexuals as pastors?

It is not accidental that today the office of the ministry is under such intense pressure in so many ways. If Satan can confuse the church concerning what the pastor is and what the pastor does and who may be a pastor, he can seriously undermine the ability of the church to proclaim the Gospel and administer the Sacraments for it is for this purpose that God established the office of the ministry.

Today I do not have the time to address and attempt to resolve the various ways that the church’s doctrine of the ministry is being undermined or diluted or attacked. So I will limit myself to reaffirming what the Lutheran church has always taught concerning the pastoral office.

As I noted before, already at the time of the Reformation Luther was dealing with the subjects of church and ministry. Ever since that time Lutherans have given attention to this topic. And it is as timely today as it has ever been in the Missouri Synod, in the Wisconsin Synod, in the ELCA – for all Lutherans. In my presentation today I would like to focus on where the Lutheran Church has historically stood on church and ministry, particularly as it pertains to the whole concept of how the church grows and how the office of pastor fits into the concept of the church’s growth. In doing so, I am going to be looking primarily at the writings of Martin Luther and C.F.W. Walther.

As most students of Walther know, Walther was primarily a repristinator. A repristinator is someone who takes what is old and presents it again in a fresh, but faithful, way. And the one whom Walther repristinated more than any other was Luther. So Luther has to be front and center. And today Walther will have to take a backseat to him. Having said this, I think all of us would do well to emulate the theological approach taken by Walther as well. Before laying out our own clever theological views, let’s look to our Lutheran fathers and learn from them.

I’d like to begin by posing a few questions. What is the church? How is the church created? How is the church fed and nourished? How does the church grow? How is the church preserved? These are extremely important questions, as we shall see, if we want to understand the nature of the preaching ministry, or the office of pastor, as an office that has been created for the specific purpose of serving Christ’s church.

First of all, what is the church? All of us here today know what the church is. This knowledge is fairly basic and not particularly difficult to understand. In fact, our Lutheran Confessions say in article 12 of Luther’s Smalcald Articles, …“thank God, even a seven year old child knows what the church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd.”[5] And how are believers made? How is the church created? Again the Smalcald Articles answer, “In these matters, which concern the external, spoken word, we must hold firmly to the conviction that God gives no one His Spirit or grace except through or with the external Word.”[6] The word of God, the Gospel and the Sacraments, the means of grace are alone that which creates the church and causes it to grow. How is the church created? How does the church grow? How is the church preserved? Every Lutheran who has been confirmed in an orthodox Lutheran congregation already knows the answers to these questions. The word of God gives birth to the church; the word of God nourishes the church; the word of God strengthens the church; the word of God preserves the church; the word of God sustains the church to the end. The birth of the church and all growth of the church and in the church is caused by the Word of God and by the Word alone.

How to grow a church? That is really not a question for us at all. That’s a question for God. And God has already answered the question. “As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth” (Isaiah 55:10-11). The Spirit grows the church through the word.

Martin Franzmann expresses it quite well on the very first page of his book, The Word of the Lord Grows.

“The word of the Lord grew”—three times in the Book of Acts, Luke uses this sentence to sum up a period of the history of the first church (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). These words are a telling expression of the Biblical conception of the divine word. Our Lord Himself compared the word with a seed that is sown and sprouts and grows: “The seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). The word of the Lord is a power and is active; it “prevails mightily,” as Luke puts it in one of the passages just referred to (Acts 19:20). Paul speaks of the Gospel as “bearing fruit and growing” (Col. 1:6), and Peter speaks of the “living and abiding word of God” as an “imperishable seed” (1 Peter 1:23).[7]

The New Testament, according to Franzmann, only knows of one means of growth—the means of grace.

On the basis of this understanding of the church, how it is born, how it grows, how it is preserved, I’d like to talk about some misperceptions today in regard to church and ministry which I think are damaging our understanding of God’s grace and our unity in the church. Then my presentation of the views of Luther and Walther will be primarily a response to these misconceptions.

1. The first misconception is in the area of how the church grows. Many today actually seem to believe that the church is growing when members are added to congregations. When a congregation grows from 200 to 800, this is seen as church growth. But to determine that the church has grown simply because there are more warm bodies in a building is hardly indicative of a good understanding of what the church itself is, namely sheep who have heard the voice of their shepherd. To hold the position that God’s church has grown, simply because more people are in a given place at a given time than used to be at such given place and given time, is to misunderstand completely the nature of the church itself. Or at least it is to misunderstand the distinction between the visible and invisible church. God’s church, the body of Christ is born of and grows and lives only from the Word of God, and in particular the Gospel.

2. The second misperception is related closely to the first and concerns our understanding of the means of grace. In many places new methods have been raised to the level of the means of grace. The methods themselves are seen as responsible for growth in the kingdom. There is no longer any need for the Holy Spirit, at least in the orthodox Lutheran sense, as the one who builds the Church through the Gospel and through the Gospel alone. There seems to be little need for the means of grace as that which the Holy Spirit uses to create the Church. Rather, the application of specific methods is seen as the key to the creation and vibrant growth of the church.

3. The third misperception occurs when the office of the pastoral ministry is viewed no longer as the dispenser of the means of grace through which alone the church is born and nurtured and preserved, but as an administrative position the main function of which is to enable others to do the work of ministry. The "new ministers" are thus enabled to look to the pastor and see him as the one who enables them to do what was once considered his duty. God's established method of applying the means of grace to His flock is then nullified. In addition, if those who are not trained theologically are now the ministers into whose hands has been placed the proclamation of the Word, the inevitable result will be the confusion of the proclamation, resulting in error and misunderstanding and finally in frustration which causes a waning interest in doctrine, and a consequent move toward unscriptural ecumenism. Now I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I am not saying that Christian laypeople cannot speak God’s Word to other people in such a way that other people become Christians and are added to the church. I’m talking about a misperception regarding the office of the pastor. We need to keep firmly in our minds that the pastor is not primarily an enabler or administrator. He is primarily a shepherd whose duty it is to feed the sheep and this feeding takes place when he proclaims the Gospel purely and administers the sacraments.

I think these three misperceptions have factored heavily in some of the misunderstandings among us over the whole issue of church growth. Actually, the question, "How do we do Church Growth?" is not a particularly Lutheran or, for that matter, Christian question. Instead, Lutherans and all true Christians historically have occupied themselves with completely different questions. How do we see to it that the Word is faithfully proclaimed in our congregations? How do we reach with the Gospel those who do not have it? How do we keep pure the proclamation of that Word which alone can give life?

Consider one of Luther's most poignant questions. "Are you a shepherd of souls, O Pope?"[8] This question, posed already in 1520 in his work, "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church", was not simply a rhetorical question meant to declare, "O Pope, you are no shepherd of souls." Surely it was meant to do that. But this question reveals also Luther's anguish for souls which are deprived of the pure Word of the Gospel and therefore perish. The questions Luther asked dealt with salvation. They were therefore theological questions, not method questions. It never would have occurred to Luther to ask a question such as, "How do I advance the cause of Lutheranism and gain followers in my movement?" He simply didn't think in those terms. The questions that filled the mind of Luther were questions such as this one: How shall we, through our proclamation of the Word, so disarm the kingdom of the devil that the Gospel may shine forth freely in all its splendor and the flock be fed with the Word of life?

Thus, Luther's emphasis was never on method, but on preaching and on the content of preaching. He recognized that only the Word creates the church and causes it to grow.

The Word they still shall let remain, Nor any thanks have for it.
He’s by our side upon the plain With His good gifts and Spirit,
And take they our life, goods fame child and wife, Let these all be gone,
They yet have nothing won – The kingdom our remaineth!

Why? Because we have the Word! Listen to Luther in his Smalcald Articles of 1537.

“He (God) has a peculiar congregation in the world, which is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which He reveals and preaches, [and through which] He illumines and enkindles hearts, that they understand, accept it, cling to it and persevere in it.”[9]

Walther holds the same position. In his very first thesis on church and ministry he states, “The church in the proper sense of the term is the congregation [Gemeinde] of saints, that is, the aggregate of all those who, called out of the lost and condemned human race by the Holy Spirit through the Word, truly believe in Christ and by faith are sanctified and incorporated in Christ.”[10] In an essay given in 1866 entitled “The True Visible Church” Walther says simply, “Where there is no pure Word at all, there also is no church; for souls can be reborn only through the Word of God.”[11]

In an essay entitled Church and Ministry my father Robert Preus expresses a similar conviction. “The Gospel creates the ministry and the church, and the church and her ministers have no other work and mission than to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments through which the church and her ministry lives." [12] In one of his sermons he talks about God’s Word of grace in Christ and how the preaching of this grace saves. “That is how we are saved, rescued from the death of sin, spiritual death. We are made alive, we are made a new creation, a creation of grace.... And so the church, you and I, are dead men come alive by God’s almighty power, like the dead bones in Ezekiel’s vision, which suddenly become a mighty, living army.”[13] To say that the Word is operative and causes faith and to say that the Gospel brings the dead to life is to say nothing other than that the Word creates the Church.

But let’s speculate for a moment and imagine that Luther and Walther had been pressed for an answer concerning their church growth methodology. Imagine for a moment that someone approaches them and says, “Yes, we understand that God’s Word builds the church. But what is your method? How shall we most effectively reach people with that Word?” I am confident that both would have answered in a similar way. “The method is the ministry, the office of pastor.” And they would have hastened to add, “This is God’s method, God’s method for administering the means.”

Listen to Luther on the office of the ministry.

I hope, indeed, that believers, those who want to be called Christians, know very well that the spiritual estate (the office of the ministry) has been established and instituted by God, not with gold or silver but with the precious blood and bitter death of his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ [I Peter 1:18-19]…. He paid dearly that men everywhere have this office of preaching, baptizing, loosing, binding, giving the sacrament, comforting, warning, and exhorting with God’s Word, and whatever else belongs to the pastoral office…. Indeed, it is only because of the spiritual estate that the world stands and abides at all; if it were not for this estate, the world would long since have gone down to destruction.[14]

Lutherans believe therefore that there is no difference between the feeding of the flock and the growth of the Church. The Church is born when the Word is preached; the Church grows when the Word is preached; the Church is preserved when the Word is preached; and in fact the Church will even by judged on the last day on the basis of that same Word that has been preached. God has instituted the office of the ministry in order to give His flock His Word. Undoubtedly some of you here today are familiar with Luther’s statement about preaching. “Whenever you hear me, you hear not me, but Christ. I do not give you my baptism, my body and blood; I do not absolve you. But he that has an office, let him administer that office in such a way that he is certain that it comes from God and does everything according to the Word of God, not according to our free will.”[15]

The preaching of the Gospel, along with the administration of the sacraments is the duty, and the only divinely established duty, given to pastors. Lutherans believe that the office of the pastor is an office of the Word. It is an office created by the Word of Christ and an office created to proclaim the Word of Christ in order to create the Church. It is not an administrative office, it is not an executive office, it is not an enabling office. It is a preaching office and the only divinely established duty of the one who holds it is to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments. “This alone is the office of a bishop,” [16] says Luther. And so Walther, in describing the power of the Predigtamt, says simply, “The public ministry [Predigtamt) has the power to preach the Gospel and administer the holy sacraments as well as the power of spiritual judgment.”[17] The pastoral office is an office of the Word. Permit me to share just one more observation from Robert Preus. In reference to the office of pastor, he writes, “He serves with the Word and he leads and rules with the Word; with the Word he tends the people of God whom Christ has purchased with His blood and who have been entrusted to him; and he will give an account.”[18]

But if all this is true, that the preaching of a pastor is to be heard by the people as the Word of God and that this preaching and teaching along with the administration of the Sacraments is the only activity to which the minister is called, the preachers themselves better be straight on the connection between their office and the Word of God. They have been called not just to preach but to preach God’s Word. And it is not God’s Word just because they, as one of His ministers, preach it. As Luther says, “I would not want to vouch for the fact that the devil has never been a pastor or a preacher.”[19] It is God’s Word insofar as it is drawn from the Scriptures. Frankly, it is hard for me to believe that some pastors, whose sermons more closely resemble pep talks or how-to seminars or entertaining speeches, could actually view what they have preached from the pulpit as the very Word of God. Have some of these men forgotten the connection between their office and the means of grace? No man should ever leave the pulpit without being able to say, “What I preached to the people this day was the very Word of God.” That is the only reason he’s there. And when that does not happen, perhaps it is because the preacher no longer believes that it is only the Word that gives birth to and grows the Church. Perhaps it is because the preacher has concluded that certain clever humanly devised strategies and methods are necessary in today’s culture to effect the growth of the Church.

But the connection between the pastor and the Word is, as I have already implied, even more specifically a connection between the pastor and the Gospel. It is not the Law but the Gospel that creates faith. According to Melanchthon n the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, lex semper accusat – the law always accuses. And no one is comforted by accusations. The Gospel, on the other hand places Christ before our eyes as substitute and sacrifice for sin, as atoner and redeemer, as reconciler and Savior. And the sinner is comforted when he sees God as the one has mercy and forgives in Christ His Son – and faith is created.

The pastor's preaching, therefore, must always be focused on Christ. The office of the ministry itself is christocentric. It constantly points to Jesus, His person and His work in order that faith in the Son of God may be created and thus the Church created. The office of the ministry is christocentric; therefore preaching is christocentric. One of my favorite statements of Luther is one that he makes in his Explanations of the Ninety-five Theses. He exclaims, "May every single sermon be forever damned which persuades a person to find security and trust in or through anything whatever except the pure mercy of God, which is Christ."[20] Why does Luther damn sermons that do not point to the mercy of God in Christ? It is not simply because the preacher isn’t carrying out his duty and thus disobeying God when he doesn’t preach about Christ, but also because it is only when he preaches Christ that the Church can be born and grow. Pastors, therefore, who are truly interested in church growth will make it their absolute priority to preach about the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Church growth, so-called, that is the result of anything other than the proclamation of Christ, His person and His redeeming work, is no true church growth at all, but only an apparition, a mirage, a deception.

Robert Preus underscores this necessity to preach the Gospel of God’s mercy in Christ when he says that the Word the pastor preaches, “…is not a mere sign that points the way to eternal life, but it actually brings Christ and eternal life to the sinner and brings the sinner to faith in Christ. It is more than a mere invitation, offering us righteousness and salvation; it actually confers these blessings on us and makes us partakers of Christ’s kingdom.”[21] When the Gospel is not preached, the church cannot grow and the kingdom of God is not populated.

Of course, the law must be preached as well. No sinner will listen to the Gospel if he is not first brought to the recognition of his sin. But the preaching office, although it requires the preacher to preach the law, is not an office of the law. It is an office of the Gospel and therefore an office about Christ and the benefits that are ours through Him. Consequently, it is an office that of necessity focuses on the article of justification through faith in Christ. And here I want to emphasize that you cannot preach justification without talking about the person and work of Christ, you cannot preach the Gospel without talking about who Jesus is and what he has done.

We know, as Lutherans, that just as justification is at the center of all Christian theology, so Jesus is at the center of the doctrine of justification. In my opinion, it is essential especially in today’s pluralistic context to make sure that we who are teachers and preachers in the church intentionally see to it that the person and work of Jesus remain at the center of our proclamation. The honor or glory of the pastoral office, if one can speak in this way, does not derive from the fact that the pastor preaches to many people or that he visits the suffering or that he teaches the children of the congregation. The glory of this office is derived from the fact that it brings Christ and His forgiveness and salvation to those in the pew and in the hospital and in the classroom. In Jesus God bestows His grace and forgiveness and salvation.

And because Luther sees the pastor as the instrument through which God administers His means of grace that bestow the benefits of Jesus and that therefore give life and growth to the Church, he cannot praise this office enough. “All who bring the Word of God, who are preachers and ministers of the Word are called messengers (or angels) of God.... It is a very great glory for a miserable human being to be called a messenger of God and to have his name in common with the heavenly spirits.”[22]

The Augsburg Confession expresses this same exalted view of the office of the ministry. Article IV of the Augsburg Confession speaks about justification and the fact that we are justified through faith in Jesus Christ. Article V touches upon how God creates faith. “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means he gives the Holy Spirit who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel. It teaches that we have a gracious God, not through our merit but through Christ’s merit, when we so believe.”[23]

Also Martin Chemnitz, one of the great orthodox Lutherans responsible for the writing of the Formula of Concord, emphasizes that the office of the ministry is to be held in high regard. “One must not think that this is done by human arrangement or only for the sake of order… Because God Himself deals with us in the church through the ministry as through the ordinary means and instrument. For it is He Himself that speaks, exhorts, absolves, baptizes, etc. in the ministry and through the ministry.”[24]

The pastoral office is a precious gift of God to the Church. According to C.F.W. Walther, “The ministry of the Word or the pastoral office is not a human institution but an office that God Himself has established.” [25] Again, Walther declares, “The pastoral ministry is the highest office in the Church, and from it stem all other offices in the church.”[26] The man who holds the office of pastor holds the highest office one can have in the church for it is his privilege to preach the Gospel of Christ with the conviction that the Holy Spirit will use his proclamation to create the Church and to nourish, comfort, strengthen, and protect the Church. The office of the ministry, therefore, is to be held in high esteem by everyone for it is God's office, used by Him to dispense His Word and Sacraments and thereby give birth to the Church and keep her until the time of her final deliverance.

But just as the flock is to respect the office of pastor since it is instituted by God, so the pastors are to love the flock as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. The faithful pastor loves his flock and is therefore committed, in his preaching of the Gospel, to a tender treatment of the souls of Christ’s church. The pastor is not to Lord it over the flock like a tyrant – because the preaching of the Gospel which is his primary task, is after all, an absolution, a proclamation of forgiveness to all the world.[27] The Gospel cannot be employed as a hammer to beat the church of Christ into subjection. It is preached to comfort, to assure, to strengthen, to encourage. Faith cannot be forced. Therefore, says Luther, “I can drive no man to heaven or beat him into it with a club.”[28] Pastors who truly love the people of their congregation will understand that people cannot be harangued into Heaven. Pastors who do not see the result of their preaching of the Gospel may be tempted to try to strengthen the message a bit by adding a little clout to the Gospel for those who seem to disdain it. But adding conditions to the Gospel or trying to strengthen the proclamation by bawling people out for not believing in God’s grace will not bring people to faith. Only the pure Gospel can create faith and the pastor who truly loves his people will trust the power of the Gospel to do what God has promised it will do. They will not try to change it, modify it, edit it, transform it, add to it, enhance it or otherwise improve it. They will preach the same Gospel week after week with the conviction that it is “the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16) To change the Gospel in order to strengthen it is not to love the people in the pew; it is to rob them. It is absolutely essential, therefore, that pastors trust God’s promises in the Gospel that they preach to others and that they preach this pure Gospel unashamedly. Only in this way can they love the flock of Christ.

The love of a faithful pastor for his flock is seen clearly in Luther himself. In a letter to Elector Frederick in March 1522, Luther speaks of the congregation at Wittenberg as his flock and insists he must return from the Wartburg where he had fled under the ban of the emperor. He defends his return as necessary to protect his fold into which Satan has intruded. Viewing the congregation in Wittenberg as his children in Christ, entrusted to him by God, he insists he cannot abandon them and is willing, if necessary, even to die for them.[29]

Every pastor loves his flock. As Luther did, so did Walther. In their book Walther and the Church, Dallman, Dau and Engelder dedicate six pages to a description of Walther’s great respect for the congregation.[30] And Walther also recognized that the pastor himself could not define the nature of his love toward the flock. Rather, God defines the nature of the pastor’s love. This love of the pastor for the people finds its source in that same power that creates the Church, namely the Gospel of justification. Says Walther,

So far as the art of making the doctrine of justification the focus of all our pastoral work is concerned, it will no doubt want to claim us as its students forever. There are many pastors who indeed know how to preach marvelously about justification, but the rest of their pastoral work is a legalistic procedure. This doctrine should so dominate a pastor’s whole mindset that it not only makes him gentle toward every poor sinner and discourages him from using any other means to hearten him, but also gives him the weapons to drive out Satan from everyone he meets, as was the case with Luther, since all our hope for accomplishing anything stems from this doctrine. If we do not succeed in this, then it is our fault if the work of renewal does not go forward in our congregations.[31]

Walther was firmly convinced that if the doctrine of justification was treasured by the pastor and dominated his preaching, the exercise of his office would not be a burden, but a joy. In his lectures on Law and Gospel, he declares,

Now do not merely listen to this statement of the apostle [1 Corinthians 15:3 – that Christ died for our sins] but think of the time when you will be the pastor of a congregation, and make a vow to God that you will adopt the apostle’s method, that you will not stand in your pulpit sad-faced, as if you were bidding men to come to a funeral, but like men that go wooing a bride or announcing a wedding. If you do not mingle Law with the Gospel, you will always mount your pulpit with joy. People will notice that you are filled with joy because you are bringing the blessed message of joy to your congregation.[32]

The faithful Lutheran pastor will have joy when the people have joy because the faithful pastor loves his sheep. But it is not sufficient for the pastor simply to preach the Word and to profess his love for the sheep. He must be willing to defend the sheep, even if it should mean bringing great danger upon himself. The faithful pastor who loves his flock will always bring them the Gospel for it is only the Gospel that has the ability to protect the flock against all attacks of the devil. It is only the Gospel that has the power to create and sustain the church, to give life and growth to the church.

Thus, the Lutheran view of how the Church is created and preserved is as follows:

1. The Savior is given by God.
2. The Word about that Savior is revealed by God
3. Faith in that Savior is created by God through the Word given by God. And finally,
4. That office administering the Word of God that creates faith is instituted by God.

Everything is done by God!

And because all of this is done by God, it has to do with faith and therefore with things that cannot be seen. Can the Church be identified clearly with human eyes or is it hidden under the cross? Many people today seem little different in their beliefs from the Rome of Luther's day, American revivalism in the early 1800's and today's Charismatic Movement. All these establish in their own minds the presence of the Church not by the true marks of the Church, the means of grace, which are bestowed by God, but by something visible in the appearance or conduct or numbers of human beings.

Permit me to return once again to the time of the Reformation to illustrate.

Martin Luther asks in a sermon in 1539, "Tell me, dear pope, what is the church?"[33] In a sense Luther faced the same dilemma we face today, a confusion over the nature of the Church which results necessarily in disagreement as to how the church is born and grows. He asks the pope what the Church is because he sees that this question goes right to the crux of the problem. No wonder the pope is not a shepherd to the flock, no wonder the Roman bishops do not feed the sheep; they don't even know who or what the flock is. Luther believes that the Roman doctrine of the Church that binds the Church to specific places and people and attempts to make the church identifiable or, to use words that might be more familiar to those in the church growth movement, “countable” is an attack on the true ecclesia catholica.

This is not to say that the true church does not have visible marks by which one can identify it. It does. But these marks are the pure Gospel and the Sacraments rightly administered. And because faith cannot be seen, the boundaries of the true church cannot be precisely identified. Again – the church is the flock of Christ and only Christ knows who all his sheep are. But the church certainly cannot be identified with a visible institution or denomination. And one certainly cannot say that the church has grown simply because a particular congregation has increased in the number of its members. As far as Luther is concerned, only the Gospel causes church growth and those who view the church as visible, cannot be talking about the true Church and true spiritual church growth.

This theology of Luther, and as we know also, the theology of the Bible, is the theology upon which the foundation of the Altenburg Debate was laid. When Martin Stephan, who had caused himself to be declared bishop in 1838, was deposed in shame and the early Saxons were without their bishop and began to ask themselves, "Are we the Church when our bishop is gone and the one who led us here is revealed as unfaithful?" it was to this theology of Luther that Walther returned. The very first two of his theses in the Altenburg Debate with Adolph Marbach reveal his reliance on Luther's theology in his doctrine of the church.

Thesis 1: The true church, in the most real and most perfect sense, is the totality of all true believers, who from the beginning to the end of the world from among all peoples and tongues have been called and sanctified by the Holy Spirit through the Word. And since God alone knows these true believers (2 Tim. 2:19), the church is also called invisible. No one belongs to this true church who is not spiritually united with Christ, for it is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ.[34]

Thesis 2: The name of the true church belongs also to all those visible companies of men among whom God's Word is purely taught and the holy sacraments are administered according to the institution of Christ. True, in this church there are godless men, hypocrites, and heretics, but they are not true members of it, nor do they constitute the church.[35]

Walther reveals the influence of Luther also when writing about the office of the holy ministry. According to Walther, "The public ministry [Predigtamt] has the power to preach the Gospel and administer the holy sacraments as well as the power of spiritual judgment."[36] And again, "The holy ministry [Predigtamt] is the power, conferred by God through the congregation, as the possessor of the priesthood and all church power, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in public office in the name of the congregation."[37]

This relationship between Luther and Walther is critical for an understanding of early Missouri Synod mission work because Walther became the formative theologian for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and following Walther, early Missouri reflected in her writings and practice his understanding, and therefore Luther's understanding, of the nature of the Church and of the office of the ministry (the Predigtamt) as God's divine institution whereby the means of grace was applied - and the Church grew.

When the Saxons arrived in St. Louis and Perry County in 1838 and 1839, they were confronted by a situation which has remarkable similarities to what we are seeing in some circles now.

The evangelical awakening that burned over the frontier during the early years of the Republic soon spread eastward across the mountains and became a nationwide revival movement to which Lutherans were not immune, particularly those who used the English language. Repeatedly the pages of the Intelligencer reported protracted meetings in Lutheran congregations, periods of special interest and emotional excitement in pulpit and pew, and sudden extraordinary growth in church membership. There was much debate as to the proper methods for Lutherans to use in stimulating these revivals. Sharp distinction was drawn between the traditional method of catechization and the high-pressure appeal to the emotions.[38]

Did you notice that "extraordinary church growth" was connected with the use of proper methods in stimulating revivals? "Use the right methods and the church will grow and you will be able to see that growth. The church is countable, so to speak."

Just as the Saxons were tempted – although they resisted – to redefine the nature of the church and the office of the ministry according to the norms of the culture which they confronted, so the church will always be tempted to embrace the ways of the culture, of the world, of the society in which we live. These temptations are clearly before us today, too. And as we face them, we need to ask ourselves some questions. Shall the church follow the culture in which she lives and learn from the world how to conduct her mission and order her life? Shall we learn from the world what the Church is and shall we learn from corporate America what a pastor should be? Or is it the Word and the Word alone which gives life to the Church and sustains her? Is it the Word alone that shall define what the church is and what the office of pastor is? If the office of the ministry is to survive and act as an institution of God, it must be the Word alone that defines it. And if the Church is to survive, as the children and kingdom of God, it must be the Word alone that feeds and nourishes it and preserves it until our Lord returns to embrace His bride and lead her home.

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