LCMS Pastors Do Not Have a Safety Net like Australian Lutheran Pastors Enjoy
Why Confessional LCMS pastors must demand full and final accountability for the OSLCS and SED scandal.
A recent trip to Australia included a weekend to burn in Perth. On a previous trip in 2023, I had worshipped at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Perth, but in the intervening years, the Lutheran Church of Australia (LCA) had apostatized, voting to allow women to usurp the preaching office. St. John’s went along enthusiastically to call Mrs. Maria Rudolph as the LCA’s first impastor.1
Fortunately, there is a single confessional congregation in Western Australia, and it is not far from Perth CBD, where I was staying—Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Kensington, WA. Emmanuel is a new congregation of the fledgling Lutheran Mission - Australia (LMA).
When I arrived, I asked to speak with the pastor to receive permission to commune. “We don’t have a pastor yet, so there is no Lord’s Supper,” was the answer from the friendly congregational president. Disappointing, yet heartening: there was no communion because they were not taking shortcuts despite the sacrifice and pain. This tiny congregation meeting in a noisy community hall understands that the Bible and explanations of AC V, AC XIV, Apology XIII, and Apology XXIV, among others, lovingly bind their confession and witness.
The congregation, which was notably younger than the average age at St. John’s, had formed because it knew there was no debate in Scripture or the Confessions about the sex of those authorized to administer the sacraments (it’s rightly called and ordained men, if you’re uncertain).
The congregation did its best without a pastor, confession and absolution, the Lord’s Supper, a pipe organ, a full liturgy, hymnals, or a building adorned with all the liturgical trappings. These are things that most LCMS pastors and parishioners assume will never disappear unless caused by a natural disaster.
Refugees from Apostasy
The LCA’s inevitable slide into apostasy was born of a compromise at its founding,2 where achieving ecclesial unity was more important than doctrinal immutability. The Liberal compulsion of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Australia (ELCA) eventually won out decades later as its agents perfidiously persisted year after year to massage the votes and bind consciences until ladies were permitted to blitzkrieg the Office of Holy Ministry.
LMA is trying to rebuild from the rubble, though everything is stacked against it from an earthly perspective. Several pastors who quit the LCA in protest and because they could not suffer the humiliation, found refuge in congregations in Canada and the US.
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) pastors, where will you be a refugee if the Synod allows its current compromises to crowd out Scripture? Will you flee to Germany? Will you pick up and move to Kenya? Will you emigrate to Brazil? Will you band together with faithful brothers to establish a new synod in America?
But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. 2 Thessalonians 3:6
Which compromises do we speak of? The one that allowed the Pastors, lay and school leadership, and the congregation of Our Savior Lutheran Church, Arlington, VA, to renounce Scripture and the Confessions through publicly evident homosexual and transgender affinities. Those sympathies blossomed in the pastoral office, congregation, and school, along with several other problems that cumulated into a governance crisis that has compromised District President Harmon, the Southeastern District, and yet threatens to contaminate the whole Synod.
It was not a momentary lapse of reason that led the senior pastor to model a stole, smiling as he denied the First Article in his own sanctuary. It was not “ministry” to model that stole for a parishioner confused about the God-ordained sex binary. It was not an act of Christian love and nuance to attend a daughter’s same-sex wedding. It was not Christian catechesis to guide first graders to a queer musical. It was not Christian tolerance to allow school library books declaring Allah to be God. It was not Christian compassion to take punitive action against members who raised these and other concerns to the congregation, the District President (DP), the Regional Vice President, and the Synod President (SP).
It was an act of ecclesiastical negligence and a breach of duty to dismiss the complaint before it was properly investigated and addressed. It was a serious mistake to allow Wayne Fredericksen to be elected Secretary of the Southeastern District, considering that the DP and SP knew about the complainant’s report before the start of the Southeastern District Convention. It was needless obstruction to delay discipline for three-fifths of a year. It is wicked that the congregation felt authorized to unjustly punish members by revoking their voting rights. It was an act of open rebellion for DP Harmon to offer comfort to the congregation on November 30, 2025. It was bold and unrepentant of Fredericksen to justify his actions. It is telling for Synod Liberals to extend sympathy as if a grave injustice has occurred.
The Issue Will Not Go Away
The OSLCS wound is suppurating because it isn't merely an inconsequential venial sin healed by a single reluctant resignation, nor is it one that can “disappear” from view. The scandalous infection took hold and spread because LCMS ecclesiastical governance has corroded, paralleling the loss of fidelity to the Scriptures, as evidenced by the crash in Synodical membership and weekly attendance.
I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.
For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.” 1 Corinthians 5:9-13
Therefore, Australia’s lessons cannot and should not be ignored. Compromise through inaction is no less dangerous than compromise through declaration. When push came to shove, a supermajority of LCA parishioners and pastors readily apostatized because it was the path of least resistance and immunized them from social and political criticism. They all claimed and still claim to be faithful Christians who love law and Gospel, just like all the “Book of Concord Lutherans”.
President Matthew Harrison and Regional Vice President Christopher Esget should personally attend OSLCS to lovingly yet firmly confront DP Harmon, Fredericksen, and the congregation, warning them of the eternal consequences of their impiety and impenitence. This does not eliminate the need to apply the missing consequences, beginning with Rev. Harmon, who has discredited the Synodical rank and the pastoral office he holds.
Open Questions
LCMS bishops and teachers of the Christian church have an obligation to instruct the laity if the OSLCS issues are merely a new iteration of Australia’s “Open Questions,” in which fundamental matters of doctrine can be set aside for the sake of remaining in fellowship. We need unambiguous public answers:
Are affinities for transgenderism, homosexuality, Islam, and pastoral tyranny “open questions” that are not binding on faith and confession?
Are Christians free to regard those issues as “non-fundamental” and irrelevant to the content of saving faith?
Are these errors to be tolerated in love because they are a consequence of weakness rather than obduracy?
At what point are we bearing with weak brothers versus declaring, via the silence of our ecclesial authorities, that the errors are a perfectly legitimate opinion at the communion rail?
Are Scripture and the Confessions silent on the specific OSLCS manifestations, and, therefore, do they create Christian liberty?
Is it legitimate for the laity to criticize, refute, and oppose errors that are plainly injurious to faith and doctrine?
Here you see what St. Paul thinks of a little error in doctrine which apparently is insignificant, or even seems to represent the truth. He considers it so grave and dangerous that he is justified in denouncing its sponsors as false prophets, even though they appear to be eminent people. Therefore it is not right for us to consider the leaven of false teaching a little matter. Let it be as little as it pleases; if it is not watched, it will result in the collapse of truth and salvation and in the denial of God. For if the Word is adulterated and God denied and blasphemed (a result which will necessarily follow), all hope of salvation is gone. But whether or not we are blasphemed, denounced, and killed is not of any moment; for He is still living who can again raise and rescue us from the curse, death, and hell. For this reason we should learn to accord great and high esteem to the majesty and glory of the Word; for it is not such a small and light matter as the false enthusiasts of our day imagine, but one single tittle of it is greater and of more weight than heaven and earth. Hence we in this instance do not concern ourselves with Christian unity or love, but we straightway express our judgment, that is, we condemn and denounce all those who even in the smallest particle adulterate and change the majesty of the Word; for ‘a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.’ Martin Luther, Comments on Gal. 5: 12, VIII, 2669 f., quoted by C.F.W. Walther in The False Arguments for the Modern Theory of Open Questions.
The Antipodean Tragedy
How many LCMS pastors think about the day of decision arriving for them? Where will you seek refuge?
Pastor Peter Noble preaching at St Peter’s Lutheran Church in Hobart, Tasmania on the Twenty-fourth Sunday After Pentecost 2024 (Nov. 3rd 2024). He now serves the flock at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Thunder Bay, ON.
Also notable is that St. John’s has an “Acknowledgement of Country” on its web site, which says “[we] pay our respects to Elders past”. In Aboriginal cosmology, “Elders past” cannot be divorced from mediation of time and space by the spirits of dead ancestors.
In 1965, the Document of Union was drawn up, proposing that the UELCA and ELCA churches disband their overseas fellowships so that union could proceed. Differences in matters of critical doctrine were declared to be “Open Questions” (the Last Things, the Millennium, Antichrist, Conversion of Israel, Church and Ministry, Election, Christ as the God-man, Attitude to the Lutheran Confessions, Sunday, Church Fellowship and Engagement), and the suggestion was made that they be settled after union by the united church. Both churches accepted this document in 1965, resulting in the declaration of fellowship in November 1965 and the formation of the LCA in 1966. Ironically, Hermann Sasse was a driving force for the union.
We have so much work to do.
Thank you very much for your interesting words about Australia and the situation in the States. The situation in Germany is even worse, since the SELK in most parts is a more or less liberal church body, many rejecting the verbal inspiration, the creation in six days; most congregations practicing "ecumenical services" with the State Church, Roman Catholics, Baptists and others; women have the right to do all things, with the exception of being ordained and consecrating the Lord's Supper. There might be a split in the next years, but that would only be the separation of those who want women's ordination; the remaining part of the SELK will go forward in the way described above. And in most parts of the FRG, there is no refuge for confessional Lutherans, since the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church (in former times a sister church of the LCMS) is mainly in the Eastern parts of the FRG. I think the LCMS should act with the SELK in a lovingly, but very consequent way.
Concerning Australia, Sasse was a main manager of the unification - and he knew, as someone from Australia once mentionend at a closed meeting of the Leipzig Mission, that they had triggered the ELCA ("Wir haben sie über den Tisch gezogen"). There had been a long way to that unification, a very sad way. For more information let me point to the booklet of Gavin L. Winter: How are the mighty fallen? He is a pastor of the ELCR in Australia. The booklet might be on their website. (In the 1960s there was only one pastor, F.G. Kleinig, who refused the unification and then formed the ELCR, which, helas, had become somewhat legalistic (headcovering, women's dressing). Later others separated, like Vernon S. Grieger and his brother and Clarence Priebbenow and formed the AELC, which was splitted over discussion about the administration of the Lord's Supper in problematic situations (when there are small congregations without pastor and without sister congregations with pastors and cannot be served by pastors regularly).)