The Holy Ministry

38 logia
be dispensed with, for it was the call that made the minister
(shades of Missouri!). A general synod was called for the clergy
of Pomerania (1556) under the theological leadership of John
Knipstro, the great Pomeranian reformer. The synod ruled that
“the calling or election of a person must be distinguished from
the ordination” and committed itself to the “general rule of
Luther” that “there must be a rightful vocation and ordination
to the sacred ministry wherever the church of Christ is.” The
Wittenberg faculty, with Melanchthon concurring, rejected the
position that ordination was an adiaphoron and held that
Freder’s call did not constitute ordination. Thus, only those
who are duly elected, called, and ordained are to be considered
public ministers of the Word and Sacraments with the competence
to preach and administer the Sacraments.
Meaning we must have in life.
Meaning we must have in our
occupation, job or profession.
Meaning there will be in the pastoral
office. But if that meaning is not
supplied by the Word of God, its
absence will be filled by something
else.
But doesn’t the Augustana merely require that a man not
publicly teach in the church unless he be rightly called? There
is nothing of ordination there. As Arthur Carl Piepkorn clearly
demonstrated in a paper prepared for and delivered to the faculty
of Concordia Seminary, rite vocatus (ordentlicher Beruf)
are technical terms of the sixteenth century and include the
election, call and ordination. Even the Confutation understood
what rite vocatus meant, commenting only that the Lutherans
erred in not demanding that a bishop perform the ordination.
The Greek translation of the Augustana of 1559 was understood
by the ecumenical patriarch, Jeremiah II, as including ordination
in AC XIV.
Ordination itself is by the laying on of hands and with
prayer. It was originally not an elaborate rite. Since the grades
of bishop and presbyter are not by divine right, a presbyter has
the authority to ordain in his own church qualified candidates
for the Office of the Holy Ministry.
Is there an indelible mark bestowed at ordination? Most
Lutherans would answer with a resounding, “No!” The Confessions
do not address the question of a character indelibilis. In
the actual practice of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the rule
seems to be “once ordained, always ordained.” The Churches
of the Augsburg Confession did not reordain those who had
received holy orders in the pre-Reformation church. The practice
has been and continues to the present that a clergyman
coming from another confession is not to be reordained. The
only exception to that general practice was the practice in the
Lutheran Church in America which saw ordination as a
denominational entry rite rather than ordination to the min-
istry of the ecumenical church of God.
While stressing ordination, it must be pointed out that
while the ordinary administration of baptism is to be performed
by a pastor, the Confessions do follow the pseudo-
Augustinian tradition that a layman may baptize in a life-anddeath
emergency and also in the emergency situation absolve.
However, the Confessions never give the layman the right to
consecrate the elements of the Lord’s Supper, on the grounds
that the Sacrament of the Altar is not necessary for salvation. It
is worth nothing that this teaching of the Confessions is rather
habitually broken by the local authorization of vicars in the
Missouri Synod to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
LIFE IN THE DAILY PARISH
The Office of the Holy Ministry has fallen into lower and
lower regard, both in the general public and even among the
people of our congregations. Certainly the latest scandals of the
televangelists have done nothing to enhance the public view of
the office. But we cannot lay the blame on the Jim and Tammys
of the tube, for many pastors have themselves developed a
low regard for the office they hold. They have valued too little
the office of preaching the Word of God and administering the
Holy Sacraments. Instead, they have looked elsewhere for value
and meaning in what they do.
In the fifties, as I entered the ministry, the big new effort
for meaning in the ministry was in Clinical Pastoral Education
and counseling. Looking at conference agendas from the fifties
and early sixties, one would think that these were not pastoral
conferences but conferences for the American Association of
Psychology.
The mid-sixties brought the social upheaval that still colors
our society. Many pastors believed, and then acted upon
that belief, that the main purpose of their office was to be a
change agent in society. Social involvement in “the Movement”
was the thing that gave validity and meaning to being a minister.
“The Movement” was variously identified in the sixties and
seventies as integration and civil rights, and then the war in
Vietnam. But that, too, lost its meaning, and clergy began to
cast about for new ways to validate what they were doing.
The mid-seventies to mid-eighties have offered a variety of
new ways of validating the pastoral office. The new mark of
being a clergyman who is ahead of the pack is to talk about the
management books that he has read and the journals of management
and administration to which he has subscriptions.
The title “Administrative Pastor” (never heard before 1975) is
now highly coveted among the clergy. Church management
seminars are the new spiritual retreats of the avant garde clergyman.
Church Growth and the many seminars that are held
to teach the techniques and methods of “selling the customers”
on the church’s programs have also become another means for
validating the worth of the clergyman. Meaning we must have
in life. Meaning we must have in our occupation, job or profession.
Meaning there will be in the pastoral office. But if that
meaning is not supplied by the Word of God, its absence will
be filled by something else.
These reflections are not meant to be cute or cutting. After
thirty years of being a parish pastor, the last year of which has