Official Handbook Source Text
Handbook page 211
Source: LCMS Handbook 2023, page 211.
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.
(e) A recognized service organization shall call only those commissioned ministers or candidates designated by Bylaw 2.5.3.
(f) A recognized service organization operating domestically respects the role of all districts impacted by its mission planning. A recognized service organization shall pursue church planting or establishment of preaching stations/missions only after consulting with and obtaining the concurrence of the same districts’ president and boards or committees responsible for missions.
(g) A recognized service organization operating internationally agrees to inform, seek the counsel of, and cooperate with the Office of International Mission in its international work and respects protocol documents that may exist between The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod and her partner churches that have been made available to the recognized service organization.
(h) Each recognized service organization shall be required to give its assurance in its governing documents that recognition as a service organization is not an endorsement by the Synod or a guarantee of financial responsibility for the debts and obligations of the organization or for services provided or offered.
6.2.2 Policies shall distinguish the three classes of recognized service
organization, with criteria, procedures, and benefits appropriate to each, further distinctions being drawn within the categories as needed:
(a) A witness service organization , under the Scriptures and Lutheran Confessions, engages in Word or Word -and-Sacrament ministry (including chaplaincy), religious media/programming, mission society activity, support of specific missions, mission -and-ministry training, church worker professional development, church worker care, or other work directly related to the church’s proclamation. A witness service organization is governed solely by Synod (or partner church) congregations or a board comprising solely members of member congregations of the Synod (or its partner churches).
(b) An educational service organization , under the Scriptures and Lutheran Confessions, operates a Christian school (other than one governed solely by a Synod congregation or congregations), camp (with Christian programming), or the like. (Schools governed solely by Synod congregations, by virt ue of their recognition as such by their districts, do not need recognized service organization status and have the rights and responsibilities of parish schools without obtaining recognized service organization status.)
(c) A mercy service organization facilitates the church’s extension of the divine mercy without compromising the church’s scriptural and confessional standards. It does so in areas in which cooperation in externals is possible, in demonstrated coordination and connection with member congregations of the Synod or its partners and, wherever possible, in close proximity to the Word -and-Sacrament ministry of the Synod and/or its partners.
6.2.2.1 Policies of the Board of Directors and the mission boards and offices of the
Synod may distinguish, within the educational and mercy service classes (educational service organization and mercy service organization), tiers of
