Official Handbook Source Text
Handbook page 101
Source: LCMS Handbook 2023, page 101.
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.
manner prescribed by the congregation or parish. Congregations of a multi-congregation parish not contributing a lay voter may send an advisory lay representative, with voice but no vote. A pastor serving a congregation in an assisting capacity (Bylaw 2.5.6) is not eligible to cast that congregation’s pastoral vote.
(d) Should a multi-congregation parish involve congregations having membership in different electoral circuits, each lay representative, voting and advisory, shall attend the forum of that circuit of which the representative’s congregation is a member. The pastoral delegate shall attend the forum of the circuit, within which he serves a congregation and within the district in which he holds membership, to which he is assigned by his district president. His eligibility for election as circuit delegate shall be within that circuit only. No multi-congregation parish is entitled to more than one pastoral and one lay voting representative because of its inclusion of congregations from different electoral circuits.
(e) All four persons elected shall come from four different member congregations or multi-congregation parishes of the circuit.
(f) The electoral circuit shall determine whether the elections start with the lay or pastoral voting delegate. The two delegates shall be elected first, then the two alternates, alternating in the determined order between pastoral and lay elections.
(g) For the election of the lay voting delegate: Prior to the meeting of the electoral circuit, each congregation may nominate one layperson (i.e., not a commissioned or ordained minister), either from its congregation or from the circuit. These names must be submitted to the circuit visitor prior to the day of the circuit meeting. Nominees not disqualified by other delegate elections shall constitute the slate of candidates.
(1) Each voter shall vote for only one candidate. Candidates receiving zero votes and the candidate receiving the least number of votes shall be removed from each succeeding ballot until one layperson shall have received a simple majority of all votes cast, whereupon he/she shall be declared the lay delegate.
(2) The congregation or multi-congregation parish from which the lay delegate has been elected shall then be removed from consideration for supplying candidates for the other delegate and alternate elections for that particular convention.
(h) For the election of the pastoral voting delegate: Except those who have been disqualified by other delegate elections, each pastor who is called and installed to a congregation of the circuit in a non-assisting capacity and not a specific ministry pastor shall be eligible for election and their names shall constitute the ballot.
(1) Each voter shall vote for only one candidate. Candidates receiving zero votes and the candidate receiving the least number of votes shall be removed from each succeeding ballot until one pastor shall have received a simple majority of all votes cast, whereupon he shall be declared the pastoral delegate.
