Official Workbook PDF page source text

LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 246

2026 Convention Workbook
211
THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS  —COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
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xi. Develop more robust continuing education programs and expectations for all LCMS 
pastors—general and SMP.  
c. Strengthening our commitment to high quality theological education by extension 
i. Continue the SMP program and emphasize the need for ongoing mentoring and 
intellectual/theological growth. 
a) Adhere rigorously to SMP criteria for admission, discouraging the temptation to 
make SMP a means of avoiding the residential route toward ordination. 
b) Ensure vigorous, ongoing mentoring for SMP candidates, vicars, and pastors with 
clear lines of accountability.  
c) Encourage SMP individuals to continue their studies toward general ministry and 
to pursue further theological education.  
d) Provide needed financial assistance for SMP candidates. 
e) Develop a process by which, in limited and controlled circumstances, worthy 
individuals may be colloquized as Specific Ministry Pastors. This may include 
provision for strict background checks, additional theological education as 
needed, strong supervision and mentoring during and beyond the colloquy 
process, and other steps to discourage any temptation for this to become a means 
of avoiding the highest possible training for ministerial candidates.  
ii. Continue the EIIT and Center for Hispanic Studies programs.  
a) This is necessary in order to increase the numbers of confessional Lutheran 
pastors who can serve interculturally. (We should not, however, direct qualified 
and capable minority students away from residential pastoral education.) 
b) Provide needed financial assistance for EIIT candidates.  
c) Ensure vigorous, ongoing mentorship for all EIIT graduates.  
d. Expanding immigrant ministries by working with international partner churches to 
provide pastors for specific immigrant groups (e.g., African Immigrant congregations).  
e. When over a prolonged period of time there are no available pastors to serve a 
congregation, mission, or ministry, the Synod may address immediate and ongoing needs 
for care of such congregations through auxiliary ministers and lay leaders. It should be 
understood that any implementation of the following suggestions is to be done while 
continuing to make every effort to provide pastors to serve such congregations.  
i. Flexibility regarding both service times and even the day of worship should be 
explored when there is a prolonged vacancy. Such changes as time and date may 
allow the development of a dual parish call or enable an ordained pastor to serve the 
congregation either regularly or occasionally.  
ii. Called male commissioned ministers may lead Sunday services without the Lord’s 
Supper as needed, utilizing sermons prepared by ordained ministers.  
iii. Male laymen who are approved by districts and trained to lead services may lead 
Sunday worship without the Lord’s Supper, utilizing sermons prepared by ordained 
ministers. 
iv. Congregations may utilize commissioned ministers and other members of the royal 
priesthood to visit the sick, evangelize, catechize, and carry out other duties which 
are frequently carried out by pastors (not including the Sacrament of the Altar).  
v. Our seminaries may be tasked with preparing sermons for use in vacant 
congregations and circumstances when a pastor is unavailable to lead a service, as 
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well as developing curricula for training programs to equip commissioned ministers 
and designated laymen to serve in the foregoing ways.  
vi. In such circumstances, districts and circuits could develop ways to share the time 
and services of pastors. For example, a congregation might be asked to share its 
pastor on a monthly or other regular basis with congregations that have no other 
access to an ordained minister.  
 
As helpful background to the preceding considerations and suggestions the reader may wish to 
consult some of the following documents:  
1. The Ministry in Its Relation to the Christian Church (CTCR 1973)  
2. Theology and Practice of the Lord’ s Supper (CTCR 1983)  
3. The Ministry: Offices, Procedures, and Nomenclature (CTCR 1981) 
4. Theology and Practice of the Divine Call (CTCR 2003)   
5. 2013 Resolution 4-06A Task Force Report (report to 2016 Convention) 
6. 2016 Resolution 13-02A To Regularize Status of Licensed Lay Deacons Involved in 
Word and Sacrament Ministry 
7. The Royal Priesthood: Identity and Mission (CTCR 2018) 
8. To Extol and Equip the Blessed Partnership between the Royal Priesthood and the Office 
of the Public Ministry (2016 Resolution 13-01A Task Force, report to 2019 Convention)  
9. Opinion on Lay Reading of Sermons and Conduct of Worship in the Absence of a Pastor 
(CTCR Opinion, 2023). 
10. 2019 Res. 6-03A To Enhance the Specific Ministry Pastor (SMP) Program   
 
Adopted 
Commission on Theology and Church Relations 
October 4, 2024