Constitution metadata
- Article
- Article V
- Source pages
- pp. 12-13
Site-authored orientation
The constitutional doorway into voting members, individual members, and the confessional basis of membership.
LCMS Constitution
Article V: Membership
Names congregational and individual membership categories.
The LCMS Handbook is official LCMS governance material. This Field Guide provides navigation, search aids, references, and study helps. Readers should verify all quotations, procedures, and requirements against the official Handbook.
This page reproduces text from the 2023 LCMS Handbook for study and navigation. Readers should verify procedural, legal, parliamentary, or governance questions against the official LCMS Handbook and appropriate LCMS authorities.
Official Handbook Source Text
Article V: Membership
Source: LCMS Handbook 2023, pages 12-13.
This page reproduces text from the 2023 LCMS Handbook for study and navigation. Readers should verify procedural, legal, parliamentary, or governance questions against the official LCMS Handbook and appropriate LCMS authorities.
Article V Membership
Membership in the Synod is held and may be acquired by congregations and individuals, ministers of religion — ordained and ministers of religion — commissioned, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church who confess and accept the confessional basis of Article II.
A. Voting Members All organized congregations that have joined the Synod hold voting membership.
B. Individual Members Individual members of the Synod, who are nonvoting except for those pastors exercising the vote of a member congregation or congregations, are the following:
1. Pastors, ordained ministers, called and installed to a member congregation
2. Pastors, ordained ministers, whose congregations do not hold membership in the Synod
3. Ordained ministers, not called and installed to a congregation, serving in a capacity recognized in the Bylaws of the Synod
4. Commissioned ministers equipped for service in an auxiliary office of ministry designated in, and serving in a capacity recognized by, the Bylaws of the Synod
5. Candidates for the office of the ministry, ordained ministers, or for an auxiliary office, commissioned ministers, having formerly been installed to a first call within the Synod
6. Emeriti of the office of the ministry, ordained ministers, or of an auxiliary office, commissioned ministers.
