Official Handbook Source Text
Handbook page 23
Source: LCMS Handbook 2023, page 23.
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.
a board of trustees, a board of regents, a board of managers, or a board of governors.
(l) May: Permissive, expressing ability, liberty, or the possibility to act.
(m) Member of the Synod : See Constitution Art. V. Members of the Synod are of two classes: corporate members (congregations that have joined the Synod) and individual members (ministers of religion— ordained and ministers of religion— commissioned on the roster of the Synod).
(n) Mission board: An officially established group of persons elected and appointed as prescribed in the Bylaws, charged with developing and determining policies for a ministry function of the Synod as prescribed in the Bylaws. These policies shall establish boundaries, parameters, and principles that guide the respective mission office in determining present and future activities and programs. The mission board shall have oversight of the implementation of these policies. The President of the Synod shall be responsible for supervising the implementation of mission board policies in accordance with his responsibilities under Constitution Art. XI and Bylaws 3.3.1.1.1 – 3.3.1.3.
The mission boards of the Synod are:
(1) Board for National Mission
(2) Board for International Mission
(o) Officer: Those positions identified in Constitution Art. X A or Art.
XII 3 or Bylaw sections 3.3 and 3.4 unless qualified by a modifier.
(p) Oversight: For the purpose of these Bylaws, to monitor; to make inquiry and receive a response thereto; to make suggestions; to bring concerns to the attention of a higher authority.
(q) Praesidium: The President and the vice-presidents of the Synod.
(r) Property of the Synod: All assets, real or personal, tangible or intangible, whether situated in the United States or elsewhere, titled or held in the name of corporate Synod, its nominee, or an agency of the Synod. “Property of the Synod” does not include any assets held by member congregations, the Lutheran Church Extension Fund — Missouri Synod , or by an agency of the Synod in a fiduciary capacity (including, for purposes of example, the funds managed for the Concordia Plans by Concordia Plan Services and certain funds held by The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod Foundation).
(s) Region: A division of the Synod for the purpose of regional elections.
(t) Shall: A word of command that must always be given an imperative or compulsory meaning.
(u) Supervision: For the purpose of these Bylaws (other than those pertaining to ecclesiastical supervision) to have authority over, to direct actions, to control activities.
(v) Synod: Refers collectively to the association of self- governing Lutheran congregations and all its agencies on the national and district levels. The Synod, as defined herein, is not a civil law entity.
(w) Synodwide corporate entity: A separate corporation established by the Synod for business and legal reasons. For the purposes of these
