Herman Sasse writing on the topic of “Selective Fellowship” in 1957 (Logia V.3, 1996) says:

“The pastors who have no solid theological training and are not studying any longer become mere organizers, and their sermons or ‘sermonettes’ cease to be the preaching of the pure Gospel. The lay people who do not live up to the divine ‘station’ (ie. German ‘Stand’) which they have in virtue of the universal priesthood may become good business managers in congregation and synod, church council and committee, but what they are building is not a Christian congregation in the sense of the New Testament and the Lutheran Confessions.

It is rather a sort of religious society, a society for the furthering of religious interests. They may be well-meaning, pious people, eager to build the ‘Kingdom,’ but they know neither what the Kingdom of God, nor what the Church of Christ is. They do not realize that it is God’s kingdom which we cannot build, that it is the Church of Christ who by His Gospel and His sacraments builds His Church. If these men try to establish church unity, they can think only in terms of human sociology. They do not know that they unity of the Church is something totally different from the unity existing in a merely human society.”

Shalom! Rowland Croucher

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