East Painted Creek Lutheran Church

Allamakee County, Iowa

June 22-29, 1871

To the esteemed Synod of the Norwegian-Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

“Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!”

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ”! Ephesians 1:3. Thus I have reason to exclaim with the apostle Paul when I now the honor of presenting to our esteemed synod my report concerning the state of our church body and the Church Council, as well as my own activity as president in the past synodical year. Whether we look at the internal growth and preservation against enemies of our congregations or to our church body’s expansion, the greatest challenge for us is to praise God who has bestowed upon us and thus far so graciously has preserved his Word of Truth among us. With it he has surely given us exactly the right means for our church work and the right weapons for the spiritual fight. And by blessing this Word of his truth in spite of all our weaknesses and in spite of all obstacles from our enemies, he has surely done whatever good has occurred there on the church scene, and over which we can now rejoice.

There certainly have not been a lack of bitter attacks and ominous prophecies of our synod’s near dissolution and ruin. Old and new opponents have also tried their best, partly through intrusion into our congregations and partly through receiving with pastoral service such parties as either have willfully excluded themselves or because of impenitence have been excluded from our congregations.

By carrying into effect the resolution authored at the last synod meeting concerning an invitation to a general conference we have striven to do what is in our power to hinder these unlicensed attacks and the bitter and sad disputes from being kept alive and continuing.

We have long ago acknowledged and busied ourselves with fulfilling our duty to do our part so that Christian efforts for unity on the basis of the truth could be brought about, and I can report with joy to the synod that we have now finally succeeded to the extent that the first general free conference between Norwegian Lutherans has now taken place in Decorah. Besides a large number of the members of the Norwegian Synod, most of the pastors of The Norwegian-Danish Conference, together with individual pastors and laymen from the Norwegian Augustana Synod, and of the Eielsen Synod came to it. The primary result of this conference is without a doubt the experience which we have now had, that by God’s great grace it is possible for us, in spite of the controversies of many years, to be able to confer in Christian composure and decorum about the doctrine of the divine Word, and that therefore the assembled conference has recognized the desirability of similar conferences being held in the future.

Under these circumstances I do not find it proper at this time to go into the particulars in the controversies more precisely, which also in the past year have been carried on between us and our opponents, or now, since there seems to be hope of an acknowledgment from these parties of their error and sin, to characterize these attacks on our church body in such a way as I otherwise would have believed it proper to do. Besides, the necessary documents for some of them are already public.

Since we have had no authorization from the synod it follows of itself that in this conference we have not acted on the synod’s behalf as its authorized spokesman, while here, as at other opportunities, we naturally feel ourselves obligated to give an account of how we have proceeded.

To the glory of God I can report with joy that so far as my knowledge of our congregations extends, a greater confidence and affection toward our church body has shown itself than ever before, with certain well-known exceptions. Its work and its battle are winning more and more appreciation round about. People are learning more and more to understand that our battle really concerns the preservation of the glorious heritage of our fathers, the pure Word of truth. Within the congregations, therefore, as a rule, it has been peaceful and quiet. A trusting attitude, full of love, occurs almost everywhere between congregations and their pastors. They are respected for their work’s sake and for the faithfulness, diligence and ability with which they carry it out. They have also been able to work together with each other more calmly for the internal development of the congregations, for growing in true knowledge of God and Christian knowledge, and toward growing in sincere fear of God and good works. The same thing is true in the newly-founded settlements of our countrymen. In spite of our opponents’ often alluring seducers and shameful slanderers people as a rule are turning in full confidence to our synod and its pastors for help and service, and although this often can only be meager because of the current need for pastors, yet people are willing, in hope of better times, to let themselves be satisfied with this for a while rather than to throw themselves into the arms of the roving sectarian preachers or to accept a sufficiently ample service from false Lutherans, so that through not uniting with such people they shall not be separated from the true Lutheran church and their old brethren in the faith.

In the rest of this paragraph President Preus mentions a number of new congregations having been organized. He speaks about the shortage of sufficient seminary graduates from St. Louis to meet current needs. He expresses the hope that many pastors in Norway will be moved by God to accept the Calls which have been sent to them from America. He reports the death of an aged pastor of the synod, the poor health some others are experiencing, etc. The remaining pages continue to be more in the nature of a report than an address and are not translated.