My orginal quote "Because of this definition LCMS does not have the ability for discipline and ultimatly remove an erring pastor\teacher outside the congregational level."
I got this from several sourses. First from people who have lived it for over 80 yrs, from my brother-in-law who has been a wels pastor for 45 yrs, from the wels web site. Now this may not quailify in your arena of "correct vs. not correct", but i'ts good enough and reliable enough for me.
The problem is that the farther away from the original generation of those who where personally involved the more clouded as per the specific reasons. And as time usually does, the details are more of opinions based on what you want to believe more than what actually happened.
In laymans language from those who were involved, the sem. in St. Louis in the 60's became more "liberal" than the sem in Ft Wayne. When LCMS requested that those erring professors leave, they did so and became refered to as "sem-inex" (sem professors in exile". After awhile, some of those "sem-inex" inquired about returning to St. Louis, and where told if they would say the "right things" (wink - wink
)they could be reinstated...which some where. This has been the source of the current problem of "liberal" pastors\churches and the "conservative" pastors\churches in LCMS.
Ideologically you can say what you do. Historically LCMS has not. As one pastor from the wels wrote [name can't remember]
"the loss of confessional integrity in the LCMS would include:
(1) the inroads of the historical-critical approach to interpreting the Bible, especially among their theological professors and pastors; (which occured between St. Louis sem vs. Ft Wayne sem --that was more for the 2nd career guys)
(2) the hesitancy to exercise internal discipline when error surfaces, often resulting from the idea that only a local congregation could/should initiate discipline even when high-profile and powerful leaders are involved and often resulting from a tendency in Missouri [LCMS] to care almost exclusively about one's own parish and let others do their own thing;
(3) the sheer size of the LCMS, which organizationally and administratively makes things complex, coupled with the historic tendency of the LCMS to stress constitutional procedure even when doing so may obscure or delay action on more urgent theological or doctrinal emergencies;
(4) the decision to tolerate changes in fellowship practices [e.g., prayer fellowship with heterodox and "levels of fellowship"] that fuel toleration of doctrinal differences and often at a "slow" rate. Theological foundations are being weakened slowly but not dramatically as when the deity of Christ or justification by faith is attacked frontally. A false security often results."