The 2016 Milwaukee Convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will likely be remembered as the convention that restored this august church body to its moorings in the Augsburg Confession, to wit, our churches confess that "no one should publicly teach or administer the sacraments without a regular call" (Article XIV). Such a simple confession, yet trampled underfoot by 27 years of misguided so-called 'emergencies' and other unscriptural reasons for pretending men are pastors who are actually not pastors, and expecting them to do what pastors do without the calling and ordination to do it (Baptists may get away with this kind of thing, but among Lutherans it certainly should not be so). Since the 1989 Wichita Convention that enacted this de facto amendment to the Augsburg Confession, we have had to endure life in a church that was at fundamental odds with itself in word and deed. No longer,
deo gracias. Now the Synod has provided a way for these men to be trained, examined, and ordained. Now there is a deadline in 2018 after which all pastors will be pastors.
I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Synodical President Matthew Harrison, and to commend him for his work, and for his patience over the past several years, which has, as I put it to him, "paid off in spades."
Rightly should we all sing our
Te Deums and celebrate this day!
