THE CONTINUING RELEVANCE OF THE LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS

A Statement from The Office of the President
The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
1333 South Kirkwood Road
St. Louis, Missouri 63122
United States of America

I enjoy reading through newsletters and publications from a variety of Lutheran churches. I have an article in my files that I wanted to share with you from the newsletter that President Lance Steicke of the Lutheran Church of Australia sends to the pastors in his church. He was recounting a district pastor's conference at which a Lutheran theologian was speaking on the topic "Eight Reasons Why the Lutheran Confessions are Still Relevant for Today." Dr. Steicke provided the following quotation from this paper:

"We are not free-lance preachers and theologians but are subject to the discipline of our confessional loyalty. Surrounded by a host of Protestant churches where each congregation and pastor seems to do his own thing we are constantly subjected to the temptation to be more like the other-to blend into the general Protestant or evangelical scene. As one trained as a Baptist pastor, I can testify that the grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. There is great liberty and freedom in the discipline of being faithful to the Confessions. The chaos of congregational individualism is in reality a prison enjoyed for the most part only by those looking at it from without.

"The Confessions are not only needed to bind us together doctrinally, but they also provide a model of disciplined obedience to the consensus positions of the church. We might not always fully understand some aspects of the Confessions, yet we agree to teach and preach in accordance with them and not in disagreement with them.

"We are in danger of losing this model, however, in a day when an increasing number of pastors seem prepared to ignore consensus agreements and doctrinal opinions...and choose instead to teach and practice as they see fit. The problem with such polity is not so much an incorrect view of some issue or another. Indeed the free-lancers may well be right on a number of points. The problem, rather, is a deficient understanding of the doctrine of the church. In the Lutheran church each pastor does not simply decide to practice as he see fits when that practice is contrary to his church's official teaching.

"We might well advocate change or raise matters of doctrinal concern-and no one should prevent this being done in an appropriate manner. Until such time, however, as a new consensus is reached we are bound to observe in our public teaching and practice that which we have all agreed to abide by. A rediscovery of the Confessions as a model for disciplined obedience and loyalty to consensus decisions of the Church is very much needed today. If we do not rediscover the genius of our confessionally modeled polity, we are in danger of falling prey to the chaos of Protestant individualism."

I appreciated what Dr. Steicke shared with his pastors, and I thought you might also appreciate the opportunity to read this. Indeed, there is a great blessing in the Confessions of our church, both in the unity that they foster and sustain around God's Holy Word, and also in the form of the unity that is created.

From: The President's Newsletter, August 1996, p. 3