Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

to fill our fellowship. In short, the intersynodical problems that we face are not always
the result of the super-sensitivity of the ELS. Very often they are the result of the
insensitive of the part of members of the WELS. We in the WELS must not take our size
as license to say what we want and do what we want. To do so would be to walk down
the same unloving path as the LCMS in the waning days of the Synodical Conference,
when their own Synodical agenda trumped the pleadings and admonishments of their
sister synods.
In closing, one cannot help also to mention that perhaps the greatest benefit of this
study is to grow in appreciation of the men, women, pastors and teachers of this era who
so bravely gave a confession to the truth despite the earthly loss. After studying the
writings and correspondence of this era, the sentiment of Hermann Sasse hits home, “It is
always a sign of deep spiritual sickness when a church forgets its fathers. It may criticize
them. It must measure their teaching by the Word of God and reject whatever errors they
have made as fallible men. But we must not forget them.” 344 May God save us from
forgetting the proper biblical hermeneutics that have united and guided ELS and the
WELS! May God keep us from forgetting the testimony of the ELS fathers like Harstad,
Anderson, Ylvisaker, Levorson, Madson, Tjernagel, Gullixson, Thoen, and Lillegard; or
the fathers of the WELS: Pieper, Koehler, Schaller, Meyer, Reim, Brenner, Naumann,
and Voss! May the members of each synod always approach Scripture and each other
with the same sincerity of spirit, brotherly love and sisterly compassion so that we always
remain dear sisters and never become strangers again!
344 Hermann Sasse, “Fathers of the Church,” in The Lonely Way: Selected Letters and Essays of Hermann
Sasse Volume II, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002), 229.
188