If you do not already know the answer to this question, you are in trouble. In fact, real eternal trouble. Justification by grace is at the center of the confession, our faith, our lives. But I must admit, I hear people talk fourteen more often these days than four. Why? Well perhaps it is because I live in the district called Kansas, which is not only in the center of the country, but has been always at the center of the discussions about what AC XIV has to do with the Lutheran church of today. It was here that one of the first lay deacon licensing programs in the LCMS was crafted. It was here in 1989 in Wichita that the Synod discussed (or warred around) the idea of lay ministers.
Yes, Kansas is the virtual center of AC XIV talk. The current DP of Kansas says that a rite (or regular) call is basically any way that any church says anyone can do Word and Sacrament ministry. Surely, this is not what the confessors meant by AC XIV. Because if is was, they might as well saved the ink. To say this is to say nothing about order. I believe (and I know some of my friends will disagree) that AC XIV is primarily about order, plain and simple. God likes order. And true order is only established by the wider church and not the individual congregation. The point is this. Ordain first. Do Word and Sacrament second. Now there are many questions about who does this work of ordination and its nature, but there is little doubt that the confessors assumed that such setting aside of men (warning: gender specific term) to do this work would be formal and would be generally uniform in the church at large.
I do believe our current polity has not helped in regards to this issue. Currently if a church wishes have a man ordained to do word and sacrament ministry the seminary must be involved and lots and lots of hoops must be jumped through. While I strongly am in favor of a well educated clergy in general, I feel it would be good for church order, if we allow churches, in consultation with their closest churches, to have men ordained into the Holy Ministry without all of the formal education and procedures. Perhaps some of you reading this think this is slippery slope to an uneducated clergy. But I would assert that if this was an allowed practice, we would be more intentional about theologically training men in the field. Right now, most pastors don’t truly feel the need for more theological training because they went to seminary after all. If we have some ordained men well educated and other raised up by churches with less education, it provides a great opportunity for the seminary graduates to teach their fellow pastors, which in many places and times was how this work was done anyways.
But regardless, a Sunday afternoon whim is not a rite call. No, a random decision of the barely quorum of voters in an individual congregation is not a regular call. A rite call is to be set apart by the Church to do word and sacrament ministry in the usual ways of the church. And that means formal ordination (by rite, hence the name). I have argued above for changing the polity somewhat, but until then, this means sending men to seminary and jumping through the appropriate hoops. Whatever the church has decided the path to ordination is, it must be followed. That creates the order God desires in his church, the order that aids the proclamation of the Gospel to all. Ordain first. Do Word and Sacrament second.
