The Holy Ministry

40 logia
tion is pronounced each Sunday: “Upon this your confession,
I, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, announce the
grace of God to all of you, and in the stead and by the command
of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” To
which the people respond with their “Amen,” affirming that
this is right and true and is to be so.
The clergyman in the Evangelical Lutheran Church is a
priest. He is a priest in the primary sense of the Greek vocable—presbuvtero",
or “elder.” There may be lay leaders in the
congregation given the title “elder” because of our American
Lutheran penchant for copying Reformed churches of the old
American religious establishment. In the days before the Missouri
Synod learned to speak English, the chief lay leaders of
the congregation were called Vorsteher. Only when we learned
English did they become “elders.” The true “elder,” the presbuvtero",
is the pastor of the congregation, called and ordained
to the work of being an elder to the people of God. As priest,
the clergyman is also the one who leads the people in their
offering of prayer, praise and thanksgiving. He is the one who,
as priest, intercedes and prays for his people daily.
Since the clergyman is undershepherd in the flock of
God—overseer and bishop in life and doctrine, servant and
minister of the Word, and priest or elder of God’s people—he
will live out his ministry in certain ways.
He will have a passion for teaching and preaching the
Word of God. Preaching and teaching are really two ways of
doing the same thing—one in a classroom and the other in a
public service. But good preaching is teaching, and good teaching
of the Word of God is more than simply conveying facts
about the Bible. It is above all else a proclamation of God’s Law
and Gospel.
It is from the Word of God that the authority of the office
derives, not from the multitude of programs that planners keep
churning out always with the promise that the next program
you institute will do the trick and make everything work just
the way it should. The clergyman whose ministry is grounded
in the Scriptures and the Confessions will always know and
understand that the true power is in the Word of God and
nowhere else.
He will have a passion to celebrate the Lord’s Supper as
the chief Divine Service every Lord’s Day and holy day. He will
be committed to seeing that the Lord’s Supper is connected to
the Lord’s Day and that it is the Lord’s Supper that in fact
makes it the Lord’s Day. Anything less than that is less than
what is expected by the confessional commitment made at
ordination. It is in the visible Word that Christ the Word made
flesh comes with the flesh that was nailed to the tree to forgive
our sins and strengthen us by giving us life and eternal salvation.
That is a gift that must be offered every Lord’s Day as our
Confessions remind us with regularity.
The clergyman committed to the Lutheran confessional
understanding of the ministry will have a passion to pray for
his people. All Christians, by virtue of their Christian faith, are
bound to pray for others. But a pastor has a special office, an
obligation, as one entrusted with the care of souls, to pray for
his people. He will do this at regular times of the day. Even
though there is no canonical obligation as in the Church of
Rome or even in the Church of England, the clergyman of the
Augsburg Confession will want to set aside at least the prayer
office of Matins and Vespers as times to pray for his people.
Morning and evening, as the morning and evening sacrifices of
ancient Israel, the prayers of the pastor will rise as the incense
before the altar of God. Only in a regular, ordered, disciplined
life of prayer will the intercessions for God’s people take place.
The clergyman committed to the Lutheran confessional
understanding of the ministry will have a passion to be at worship
with the people of God on as many occasions as is practically
possible. Certainly it goes without saying that Sundays
and major holidays will be celebrated. But the pastor who
understands the importance of worship will schedule worship
at other times during the week. The opening of Bible classes,
the many saints’ days and minor festivals that are usually
ignored, can all be profitable times for worship by God’s people.
Worship is not just so much churchly “busy work.” It is
the true work of the church, that work which we will be called
to do eternally in heaven.
The clergyman committed to the Lutheran confessional
understanding of the Office of the Holy Ministry will give
opportunity to his people to make confession. While the old
practice of communion announcement has fallen into disuse,
and while it often did not serve any good need, the fact of the
matter is that it did allow a regular opportunity for private
confession, an opportunity woefully lacking in most parishes
of Evangelical Lutheranism today. The pastor committed to a
full ministry of Word and Sacrament will see that private confession
and absolution is not something to be discarded in a
cavalier manner, but rather a treasure of the church. It is a
treasure that Dr. C.F.W. Walther saw as essential to maintaining
the confessional character of Lutheranism in this country.
The clergyman committed to the Lutheran Confessional
understanding of the ministry will have a passion to equip the
people of God to be witnesses to the Gospel where they are. He
will understand that while there are no gimmicks to teach, no
spiritual laws to memorize, it is up to him to equip and train
the people of God to see that by life, action, word, and deed,
they are to be witnesses. They are to be the “little Christs” to
those about them wherever they are called in life. The clergyman
who is informed by the Confessions of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church will be concerned to teach his people what it
means to be a Christian so that they might witness to the Good
News of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.
Certainly there is much more that can be said, but I probably
am not equipped to do that. I merely speak to you out of
thirty years of experience as one who has tried to take seriously
my vow of ordination to preach the Word of God and to
administer his Holy Sacraments in accord with his command.
LOGIA