I’ve often thought that the late Professor Kurt Marquart’s discussion of the one divine office and auxiliary offices in his book The Church: Her Fellowship, Ministry, and Governance (Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. IX, pp142f) is the most excellent explanation I’ve encountered: [The office of school-teacher] belongs … to the “offices of parents” to see to it that their children “are educated in all piety, sciences, and arts.” Bringing up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is also the parents’ obligation (Eph. 6:4), not that of pastors…. Walther [the first LCMS president] quite naturally regarded the provision of schools as a parental and civil function. “Here in America,” however, he argued, “the congregation takes the place of the government in this…