Official Handbook Source Text
Handbook page 12
Source: LCMS Handbook 2023, page 12.
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.
7. Encourage congregations to strive for uniformity in church practice, but also to develop an appreciation of a variety of responsible practices and customs which are in harmony with our common profession of faith;
8. Provide evangelical supervision, counsel, and care for pastors, teachers, and other professional church workers of the Synod in the performance of their official duties;
9. Provide protection for congregations, pastors, teachers, and other church workers in the performance of their official duties and the maintenance of their rights;
10. Aid in providing for the welfare of pastors, teachers, and other church workers, and their families in the event of illness, disability, retirement, special need, or death.
Article IV Powers
The Synod in convention is empowered to and has formed corporate entities which shall have legal powers:
1. To purchase, hold, administer, and sell property of every description in the interest of the Synod;
2. To accept, hold, administer, and, if deemed advisable, dispose of legacies, donations, commercial papers, and legal documents of every description in the interest of its work.
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.
