Version History
Current published version
Today's Business, Issue 3. pp. 329-331. Revised published proposal.
Official Resolution Source Text
Resolution: 6-05
Canonical number: 6-05
Committee: Pastoral Ministry and Seminaries
Source: Today's Business, Issue 1
Printed pages: pp. 114-115
PDF pages: 114-115
Version: original, superseded
Source reference: Issue 1, pp. 114-115
Line numbers follow Today's Business, Issue 1, with numbering reset on each printed page, so delegates can compare this page with the official PDF.
Page 114
- To Reaffirm the Synod’s Process for Training and Certification for Pastors
- RESOLUTION 6-05
- Report R13.3 (CW, 68–70); Overtures 6-14–24 (CW, 370–79)
- Rationale
- Article III of the Synod’s Constitution lists the following among the objectives of the Synod:
- 1. Conserve and promote the unity of the true faith …
- 3. Recruit and train pastors …
- To accomplish these objectives, the Synod has established seminaries, various routes to ministry, and a robust procedure
- for training and certifying pastors (ministers of religion—ordained). This procedure requires that each man who is to be
- placed in the Office of the Ministry gain the approval of (at minimum) his home congregation, home district, resident field
- work supervisor, vicarage supervisor, seminary faculty, and the Council of Presidents (COP). The Synod Bylaws assign
- specific roles in this process to the seminary faculties. This duty informs every aspect of the calling, activity, and oversight
- of seminary faculty members (Bylaw sections 2.7–8).
- In recent years some members of the Synod have expressed a desire to change this procedure in significant ways, including
- removing certification from the seminary faculties or opening up the colloquy process to LCMS laymen and commissioned
- ministers who have attained an M.Div. degree (or its equivalent) at a non-Synod seminary. Among those making these
- suggestions have been former seminary faculty members and former and current leadership from some districts (Report
- R13.3, CW, 68–70).
- The 2023 Synod convention responded to these developments by passing 2023 Resolution 6-02A, “To Encourage Proper
- Pastoral Formation through Our Synod’s Seminaries.” This resolution expressed the Synod’s corporate decision to
- continue to train and certify pastors exclusively through the Synod’s own seminaries and routes to ministry.
- In early 2025, a group of former Concordia Seminary faculty announced that they would be operating an accredited online-
- only M.Div. program through the “Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) … known as the Center for Missional and Pastoral
- Leadership (CMPL)” (Report R13.3, CW, 68). In subsequent podcast appearances, the dean of CMPL has indicated that
- around two dozen LCMS laymen are enrolled in CMPL in a ministry degree program (M.Div. or M.Min.).
- While the leadership of CMPL freely admit that their program cannot currently lead to pastoral service within the Synod
- or any other denomination, in public letters and in podcasts, the dean of this program has suggested the Synod change its
- procedure for training and certification of pastors in such a way that LCMS laymen or commissioned ministers who
- graduate from this program (or potentially other institutions) could be certified for the Synod’s roster of ministers of
- religion—ordained.
- Thus, CMPL leadership insists that they are not setting up an institution that is a competitor to the Synod’s seminaries
- since they tell all of their students that their degrees cannot currently lead to certification within the Synod. Yet they
- meanwhile advocate for changing the Synod’s procedures to allow for it. Since the M.Div. is virtually coterminous with
- pastoral formation in the Synod, this will lead to confusion and an inevitable crisis in the near future when the first of these
- LCMS laymen or commissioned ministers will have graduated with their ministry degrees (M.Div. or M.Min.) from CMPL
- (or other institutions).
- The COP discussed these matters in April 2025 and tried to ward off this crisis by committing themselves unanimously:
- “Our Synod needs pastors for all our congregations and mission outreach. We implore the Lord of the Church to send
- them. We commit ourselves to direct potential students for the pastoral office only to the routes to ordination approved by
- and accountable to Synod. The Council will not place graduates from other programs. The Council members agree not to
- ordain graduates from other programs. We commit ourselves to engage the Church, our Synod’s seminaries, and Pastoral
- Formation Committee to strengthen the routes to ordination and address the challenges and opportunities for providing the
- Church well-formed candidates for the pastoral ministry” (Roy Askins, “LCMS Addresses Unauthorized, Non-LCMS
Page 115
- Pastoral Formation Programs,” Reporter Online, May 8, 2025, reporter.lcms.org/2025/lcms-addresses-unauthorized-non-
- lcms-pastoral-formation-programs/).
- This is consistent with the Synod’s longstanding position since facing a similar challenge in the 1970’s: “The question
- rather is: ‘How has the Synod decided that it wishes to have pastors trained, qualified, called, ordained, and installed in its
- congregations?’ In answer to that question the Synod has spoken again and again. Perhaps no other subject receives as
- much attention in the bylaws. The Synod has stated in great detail that it will train its own pastors, set its own requirements,
- do its own certifying, etc.” (CCM Op. 26-3076, “Participation in Nonapproved Pastoral Formation Routes,” quoting Ag.
- 682, “Constitutional Comments on the Present Controversy Within the Synod,” Minutes of Oct. 11, 1974).
- In light of all this, it is appropriate for the Synod in convention to clearly reaffirm our current procedures for the training,
- certification, and placing of pastors. If nothing else, those LCMS laymen studying for ministry degrees at CMPL (or Luther
- House of Studies or any other institution) and their home congregations deserve to have clarity: ministry degrees earned
- outside of the Synod’s own seminaries and routes to ministry cannot now, and will not in the future, be a path to service
- as a pastor (minister of religion —ordained) in the Synod. These topics have been discussed throughout the Synod for
- several years now. The arguments for changing our procedures are well understood by all. They have been discussed and
- debated at conferences, the Pastoral Formation Committee, on podcasts, and at the COP. And now two consecutive
- conventions of the Synod have weighed these arguments, decided against them, and reaffirmed the exclusive use of Synod
- owned-and-operated seminaries and routes to ministry. This assures that from generation to generation a unified Synod is
- served by faithful, well-formed pastors trained in a manner fully accountable to the congregations and pastors of Synod.
- Therefore be it
- Resolved, That the Synod in convention reaffirm 2023 Res. 6-02A; and be it further
- Resolved, That the Synod in convention reaffirm the routes to the Office of the Ministry created by the Synod as the
- only routes to certification, ordination, and service as ordained ministers of the Synod; and be it further
- Resolved, That the Synod in convention specifically reaffirm these procedures: vesting certification with the seminary
- faculties, vesting placement with the COP, and barring “LCMS laymen and commissioned ministers who complete a
- program of study leading to ordination or its equivalent at a non-LCMS seminary” from being “eligible for colloquy on
- that basis” (Bylaw 3.10.2.4); and be it further
- Resolved, That the Synod in convention reaffirm that “the LCMS has continually developed and refined its residential
- and nonresidential routes to ordination in order to address the needs of the church as they have arisen and dynamically
- changed through time” (2023 Res. 6-02A) within the overall framework noted in the previous Resolved; and be it finally
- Resolved, That the Synod in convention reaffirm its call to all members of Synod to “honor, use, and promote Synod-
- approved programs and not create independent programs of pastoral preparation or direct men to pastoral preparation
- programs outside of our Synod’s seminaries as such efforts are not in accord with the Constitution and Bylaws of the
- Synod (Const. Art. III 3; Bylaw 3.10.4)” (2023 Res. 6-02A).
