On Church Governance

Via Hermann Sasse, “On the Rights and Limitations of the Individual Congregation” (Letters to Lutheran Pastors, No. 11, February 1950)

What is it then, which binds together all these various forms of the individual ecclesia? It is not the form of organization. It is the fact that in a delimited circle of Christians, who come together into entirely concrete assemblies, the means of grace are administered, and what makes this possible is done. It is namely of the essence of the means of grace that they can only be administered among living persons, from man to man. The Gospel is spoken orally from one man to another man. Baptism can not be imparted in the absence of the one to be baptized. We must gather together to celebrate the Supper. The forgiveness of sins can not be imparted by letter – or only in special exceptional cases. Here is the essence of the Christian congregation, the individual ecclesia. It is the place where everything happens which Christ has bestowed upon His church with the means of grace. Without them it would not happen. There would be no Una Sancta if there were no individual congregation. And therefore the legitimate Christian congregation is the greatest and most glorious thing in Christianity. It is more than the greatest conceivable and most glorious representation of the church in its totality, which could exist. If a genuine ecumenical council were brought together, at which Christianity were ideally to appear without the dark shadows which have thus far been cast upon every council, the council would be nothing over against the divine service of an ever so simple genuine Christian congregation. For no ecumenical council can forgive sins, nor exercise the office of the keys. No Roman council would even claim that for itself, nor would the college of cardinals ever presume to forgive sins.

Only from this vantage can we understand the essence of the individual ecclesia, the “congregation,” “local congregation,” or whatever else we may call the concrete church of God. In the individual ecclesia that happens which is to be done in the church. There is preaching, baptism, absolution, the distribution of the body and blood of the Lord. There are the functions of the ministerium ecclesiasticum, the service of Word and Sacrament instituted for the church. There is exercised what for Luther and the Lutheran Confessions is church governance, the leading of the flock of Christ through Word and Sacrament. What we in modern Christianity have been accustomed to call church governance , stands without exception not over, but under the congregation as assisting service for it. The exception is the ordination of the pastors through bearers of the office appointed for it. But those who ordain are also nothing else and have no higher rank as pastors. Here something takes place in the life of the congregation which does not belong to it, but its effect is bound to the decisive cooperation or indeed initiative of the congregation. But as for the rest, the following applies: Church governance, properly speaking, belongs to the individual congregation. It is the entity which exercises thepotestas clavium which is given to the entire church. This can be done by no synod, no consistory nor the bishop as church regent, but only as pastor and Christian.