The vote. . .

Much ink has been spent on the topic of who should vote and what items we should vote upon in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  There was a relatively brief history behind the decision to allow women the franchise in the voters assembly.  As recently as 1965, the LCMS decided that women cannot vote only to decide in 1969 that they could.  The change was not simply a change in practice but in our understanding of the thing.  Did we vote to change our doctrine?  Some say we did.  Others are not so sure.  Since then there have been moves on both sides -- one to restrict the franchise once awarded to women and the other to enlarge it to the point of nearly advocating the ordination of women.  I suppose I could rehash the history here but I have a bigger concern.  That concern is the vote itself and not simply who votes.  

Since Missouri invented the voters assembly, it has tried to find Biblical warrant for the idea that voting in the Church is God's active and not simply His permissive will.  In fact, that is the issue.  The vote is not mentioned in Scripture nor envisioned in church history until Missouri encountered its own difficulty with a bishop deposed and a question of its own legitimacy as a church.  To be sure, I am not necessarily saying that it is wrong to vote on purchasing property or borrowing money or deciding to carpet the sanctuary (always the wrong decision).  But these kind of votes are not regular or even routine and many congregational constitutions require a super quorum to do some of these things.  The problem lies with the difficulty in keeping from voting on things that rightfully belong to our creed and confession, what Scripture says, what doctrine we believe, and what belongs to the authority of the pastoral office.  It is in this that the whole idea of the vote becomes a problem.

Of course, we say we do not vote on such things but in what sense do we not vote on them when we either vote to accept or continue or change what we believe or practice.  What does it mean if we vote by the slimmest of majorities to uphold that which we have taught and confessed over the ages?  What does it mean if we should ever fail to vote by a majority to uphold what we have taught and confessed over the ages?  Would that mean that we no longer believe and confess and practice what we have in the past?   I suppose there is a slight comfort in the fact that such changes must come front and center for a vote instead of by the back door of error or change that becomes normal yet I still feel entirely uncomfortable with the whole idea that we are voting on such things -- even to affirm that we still believe and intend to practice what we have.

Should congregations vote on how often the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood are offered?  Should the people of God who on how often or how long the sermons are?  This is perhaps the crux of the matter.  If we vote to affirm we can also vote to deny.  Then where are we?  It seems to me that we need to be much more careful about the whole matter of whether we vote and not simply who gets to vote.  Voting always makes winners and losers.  The real way we deal with such things is by teaching and preaching our people into the truth.  If the congregation or the Synod will no longer abide the Word of God or practice faithfully in accordance to it and our Confessions, we have a bigger problem than who voted in the elction to depart from the way.