Official Workbook PDF page source text

LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 179

2026 Convention Workbook
144 
OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
By 1998 the decline in the number of congregations and par -
ishes and the number of communicant members had resulted in an 
increasing number of exceptions requested of the Synod President. 
The number of exceptions has ranged from 3 percent and 9 percent, 
in 1998 and 2001, respectively, to 14 percent in 2004, hovering 
between 10–12 percent since, apart from a low 7 percent exception 
ratio in 2016. Absent a bylaw to define on what basis or criteria 
exceptions may be granted, the decision has been largely subjective 
and not without its own controversy at times. By the time of the 
creation of this task force, predictions based on the trends observed 
in the decline in both congregations and communicants expected 
larger and larger numbers of requests for exceptions from visita -
tion circuits that did not meet the current bylaw criteria as electoral 
circuits. Assuming a uniform 8 percent triennial drop in confirmed 
membership, this would have anticipated that 22 percent of 2023 
electoral circuits could require exceptions for the 2026 conven-
tion—a number that could approach 30–40 percent in the 2029 and 
2032 conventions.
Work of the Task Force
The task force commissioned several surveys to determine the 
health and viability of the current visitation circuits and the opin-
ions of pastors, circuit visitors, district presidents, and Praesidium 
on the size and effectiveness of Synod conventions in view of their 
purpose “to afford an opportunity for worship, nurture, inspiration, 
fellowship, and the communication of vital information.” The gen-
eral conclusions from these surveys both set the direction for the 
work of the task force and undergirded the recommendations made 
in this report.
The surveys revealed a profound desire on the part of all to 
strengthen visitation circuits and the functioning of winkels (cir -
cuit pastors’ conferences) and indicated that the optimum number 
needed was five actively serving pastors with the emeritus pastors 
who reside in the circuit. When the numbers of active participants 
dropped below that number, it directly impacted upon the health 
and effectiveness of the visitation circuit. With respect to the elec -
toral circuits, the surveys needed to be flexible enough to provide 
adequate and fair representation at the Synod convention and yet 
maintain a viable connection to the visitation circuit wherever pos-
sible. The discussions and proposed changes in the Bylaws rec-
ommended by the task force flowed from the concrete data of the 
white paper, the opinions of 1,682 parish pastors, 772 candidate or 
emeritus pastors, 393 circuit visitors, and 27 district presidents, and 
the combined experience of the members of the task force across 
the regions of the Synod and within the districts and circuits where 
they reside.
Even early on, the task force felt the urgency of the task and the 
consequences of making no change to the status quo. Although this 
is not the recommendation of the task force, the failure to make any 
changes would create an untenable situation due to the the rise in 
the number of exceptions for electoral circuits from triennium to 
triennium and the increasing difficulties in forming circuits with-
in the current parameters of the Bylaws. An increasing number of 
electoral circuits for the 2026 Synod convention and beyond are 
approaching the minimum numbers of communicant members re-
quired to constitute an electoral circuit (1,500) and others are very 
close to the maximum number of congregations allowed (20). De-
tails of these trends are outlined in the white paper along with pro-
jections for the situation three to six years beyond the 2026 Synod 
convention.
Already the districts have realized and begun to address the situ-
ation by realigning circuits at their 2025 conventions and by work-
or upper limit (other than practical ones) on the size of a visita -
tion circuit, other than that one should ordinarily not exceed the 
upper bound for the related electoral circuit, either in number of 
confirmed members or of member congregations, and that it should 
ordinarily take no more than two adjacent visitation circuits to form 
one electoral circuit. Practical limits, lower and upper, may be in-
ferred from the functions—important in their own right—described 
in Bylaw chapter 5.
The 1973 report of the Committee on Organization to the con-
vention dealt with questions raised about the voting rights with 
some consideration given to a more equitable division of delegates 
among districts, allowing large congregations more than one lay 
vote, giving a second and third lay vote to the other congregations 
of a multi-congregation parish, and allowing advisory pastors and 
campus pastors, too, to vote. The committee rejected all as incom -
patible with the essential principles of voting rights in the Consti-
tution: that the Synod consists of equal congregations or parishes, 
no matter the size, that possess the franchise, and that there be a 
balance of lay and clergy vote (1973 Workbook, 208–9).
Another task force had been established by the 1975 Anaheim 
convention that was to study and propose revisions to the Consti-
tution, Bylaws, and organization of the Synod. Several overtures 
to change the franchise within the Synod were submitted to the 
1977 Synod convention. Two new issues were added to the charge 
given to the task force formed in 1975: one was to consider the 
way delegates were elected, and the other was to consider allowing 
advisory delegates to vote, with a proportional increase in the lay 
votes (1979 Workbook, 59–63). The task force in 1979 proposed 
significant wording changes to several articles of the Constitution, 
and in addition proposed changes to the eligibility of the delegates 
who would cast the two votes of the congregation or parish. One 
vote was to be cast by a pastor or teacher in full-time office in the 
congregation, and the other by a duly elected lay delegate of the 
congregation (1979 Proceedings, 111, 137).
At the 1981 convention, the President of the Synod, in his ad-
dress to the convention, recommended the proposed changes both 
to allow teachers to vote (Proceedings, 64) and Res. 2-14, which 
proposed that the delegates of an electoral circuit be a pastor and 
anyone else from a congregation of that circuit. Preferably, it 
should be a layman, but any teacher or ordained minister who was 
not the pastor of one of the congregations would also be eligible. 
After lengthy discussion, this was referred to a committee to be 
appointed by the President of the Synod for a report to the 1983 
Synod convention (1981 Proceedings, 141).
In its report to the 1983 convention, the task force formed by 
the 1981 convention gave a report detailing the length of its re-
search and the various possibilities that have been suggested with 
the advantages and disadvantages of each. In the end, it concluded 
that the disadvantages of any of the suggested ways to change the 
exercise of the franchise in the Synod outweighed what would be 
gained by such a change. It termed the current exercise of franchise 
a long-established and well-working procedure (1983 Workbook, 
213–15). The floor committee’s Res. 5-23 resolved that no change 
be made in the Constitution or Bylaws pertaining to the franchise. 
However, no action was taken, and it was apparently not brought to 
the floor of the convention (1983 Proceedings, 190). Another over-
ture submitted to the 1995 convention of the Synod was declined 
by inclusion in “Omnibus B Resolution,” declining to act on it and 
simply referencing the past action of the Synod, specifically that of 
1983 (1995 Proceedings, 160).