What's Wrong With The Church Growth Study Committee Report?
By Rev. Jack Cascione

 

The entire report can be found at:
http://www.lcms.org/president/statements/christcommission.asp

See the companion article on this topic, What's Right...

The Committee's recommendations avoid the real issue, namely; how did the Synod's Congregational Voters' Assemblies surrender their authority over doctrine, practice and worship to the pastors promoting the Church Growth Movement in the LC-MS?

As a group, these "churchmen" on the Committee have little concept or appreciation for the Synod's history and official position on the doctrine and practice of "Church and Ministry" as taught by C. F. W. Walther.

The Committee writes about theology and practice of the Synod as if these were not the responsibility of the Congregational Voters' Assemblies, but only the concern of the Synod and the "right" pastors.

We ask: Who are the worship services for? The Synod, the pastors or the laity?

Clearly the Church Growth Movement in the Synod is systematically replacing Voters' Assemblies with Boards of Directors. For example: Doctor Norbert Oesch of the Pastoral Leadership Institute (PLI), endorsed and promoted by the Synod's Council of District Presidents, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund, and the LC-MS Foundation, claims that congregational Voter Supremacy is "inflammatory language" to the clergy. His goal is to retrain 225 LC-MS clergy over a period of 4 years, at a cost of l.25 million dollars a year, in "Church Growth" Leadership Training techniques. Oesch openly admits he does not teach Walther's "Church and Ministry" and polity.

In response to PLI, all the Committee can write is: "The church follows the culture when . . . the church is operated as a purely secular corporation, with the pastor functioning as the 'C.E.O,' the elders being reduced to a Board of Directors, and the congregation treated as workers, all organized according to a business plan to market a product."

We ask the Committee: If they don't like C.E.O.'s, what structure do they recommend in place of C.E.O.'s? All we have is their silence. The Committee writes from the perspective of pastoral authority and paternalism to a laity they portray as powerless and ineffective spectators.

The Michigan District "committed" itself to eight Core Values in its 2000 District Convention that contained commitments to "culturally relevant congregations," and mission congregations, "process consulting," "healthy congregational systems," and "affinity-based learning clusters and networking events." The Committee doesn't offer one practical solution on how to address the above. They identify problems and they offer correct doctrine, but they never say what the congregations should do about it.

In the first hundred years of the Synod, the laity were taught exactly what to do in their congregational Voters' Assemblies by Walther, Fritz, Mundinger, Pieper, and as detailed in the "Abiding Word." But, that Synod was organized and growing and this Synod is simply lost in the confusion of a polity vacuum.

By presenting this flawed document, the Committee has actually increased the congregations' vulnerability to the Church Growth Movement by never identifying the only approved and historic structure for LC-MS congregations, namely, Supreme Voters' Assemblies.

They boldly endorse the name Lutheran and the Creeds, issues that were confronted in the 1995 and 1998 Conventions. In their proposed resolution they write:

"Whereas, The Church Growth materials, as well as in actual practice, there is a confusion of the Priesthood of All Believers with the Office of the Holy Ministry, e.g., the pastor as manager and organizer, a misunderstanding of the Call, and a misunderstanding of Christian vocation (Evangelism and Church Growth, CTCR 1987; pp. 42-43);"

We ask: "Confusion based on what?" Would the Committee please name the quotations from Walther, Luther, or the Confessions that would direct the congregational Voters' Assembly as to exactly what action they should take to solve the problems of Church Growth?

It is all a little too late to close the barn door. The Committee speaks about a Synod of 2.5 million. When the Synod originally asked the Committee to give a report in 1995, it used to be a Synod of over 2.6 million baptized. By the time the Synod realizes the Committee failed to identify a practical course of action, it will be a Synod reduced to 2.4 or 2.3 million. The Synod's reluctance to encourage the laity to involve themselves in maintaining the correct worship and practice in their congregations through Voters' Assemblies is a virtual death wish for the LC-MS, a church body founded on congregational polity.

The Committee can't comprehend how or why the Synod's founder, C. F. W. Walther has been proven to be the greatest Lutheran Evangelist in American history, not only because he taught correctly about Law and Gospel, but also because he understood how to organize congregations with the doctrine of "Church and Ministry." Doctor Veith, an excellent scholar on the Committee, has only exposed his lack of knowledge as to our Synod's history and its congregational polity.

Dr. Veith: We wonder if the other Committee members even bothered to tell you that the Synod is not Church? The congregations and the lay people are the church!

The Committee clearly doesn't view Voters' Assemblies as an administrative body in the Synod, assigned to judge doctrine or as the final authority in the congregation. From the Synod's Seminaries and District Offices' perspective, the disadvantages of lay involvement have obviously out weighed the advantages. Who needs all those people who just get in the way of our plans?

In an obvious act of deception, the Committee even quotes C. F. W. Walther's, "The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Congregation Independent of the State," where he writes: "A congregation should do its share that the Gospel may be brought to those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death . . ." Is that it? The entire book is about Voters' Assemblies judging doctrine, worship and practice and how they should do it, but the reader would never learn that from this quote, taken out of context. Sadly and intentionally, the entire report does not address the context of the local LC-MS congregation.

In classic hyper-euro-Lutheran style, the Committee writes 502 words in "III" of Part 1, 71 words in "I" of Part 2, defending the Office of the Ministry and includes the subject in their proposed resolution without defending the authority of the Congregation in its Voters' Assemblies to judge doctrine, worship and practice. It is as if they didn't know Luther wrote: "Reason and Cause from Scripture that the Christian Assembly or Congregation Has the Right and the Authority to Judge All Doctrine and to Call, Install, and Depose Teachers." (Luther's Work, Volume 39, American Edition, pages 305-314)

They also completely ignore Walther when he writes: "In public church affairs nothing should be concluded without a vote and consent of the congregation." (Form of the Christian Congregation, C. F. W. Walther, CPH, St. Louis, 1989, p. 48)

We offer Luther's fist pounding on the table at the Papacy that might also give the Committee a knock in the head with these words:

"The keys belong to the whole church and to each of its members, both as regard their authority and their various uses. Otherwise we do violence to the words of Christ, in which he speaks to all without qualification or limitation: 'Let him be to you,' and 'You will have gained your brother,' and 'Whatever you,' etc. And the words, which were spoken alone to Peter, 'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' here find their confirmation. This word also, 'If two of you agree on earth,' and 'Where two are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of them'" [Matt. 18:19,20]. LW40:27

The Committee backs into the same hierarchialism it condemns in the Church Growth C.E.O.s. To the Committee's unconfessional bias for clergy hierarchy and selective quotations from the Lutheran Confessions ignoring the authority of LC-MS congregations, we offer the following corrective from the Confessions and the Bible.

The Confessions teach that the local congregation is supreme over the pastor. (See Trig. 507, ". the church is above the ministers" also Trig. 511, "Christ gives supreme and final jurisdiction to the Church" also Matt. 18:17, Col. 4:17, 1Peter 5:1-3, 2Cor. 8:8)

The Confessions teach that the sheep judge their shepherd in all doctrine. (See Trig. 525 par.72, ". . . the churches are in duty bound before God, . . . because Paul, Gal. 1: 7ff, enjoins that bishops who teach and defend a godless doctrine and godless services should be regarded as accursed," also Matt. 7:15-23, 1John 4:1, 1Cor. 10:15, Matt. 23:10, 1Thess. 5:1, Mark 10: 42-44, Acts 17:11, 2Pet. 2:1, 1Cor.14: 29, Rev. 2:2)

The Confessions teach that the congregation and not the Synod is "church," hence synods are human organizations. (See Trig. 511 par. 24, "Likewise Christ gives supreme and final jurisdiction to the Church, when He says: 'Tell it unto the Church.'" also AC VII & VIII Trig. page 47, "The Church is the congregation of saints, in which the Gospel is rightly taught and the Sacraments are rightly administered." also Pieper, Vol. III, 421; also Preamble, LCMS Constitution, page 8, "Reason for the Forming of a Synodical Union: 1. The example of the apostolic church, Acts 15:1-31" also "For wherever the Church [local congregation] is, there is the authority [command] to administer the Gospel . . . Just as in a case of necessity even a layman absolves, and becomes the minister and pastor of another; as Augustine narrates the story of two Christians in a ship, one of whom baptized the catechumen, who after baptism then absolved the baptizer." SA Par. 67, Trig. page 523)


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.

March 19, 2001