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LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 305

2026 Convention Workbook
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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS  —COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
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(e.g,, Commissioned Minister) within that congregation or from a neighboring congregation. 
Third, the candidate should be trained and, in the event of longer durations, supervised by an 
ordained pastor, ordinarily a vacancy pastor, circuit visitor, or district president.  
It is incumbent upon both congregation and supervisory clergy to ensure that this practice be 
reserved for true emergencies, such as the illness of a pastor or the inability to secure pulpit 
supply on short notice, or other temporary situations, such as during a vacancy. Care should be 
taken, however, not to use laymen in these instances simply to avoid the difficulty or cost 
associated with procuring a pastor. In the event of a prolonged vacancy, the presence of a lay 
officiant is no replacement for the appointment of a vacancy pastor, who may be available to 
conduct services and preach occasionally and, even if that is impossible, provide pastoral care 
and oversight to the congregation in the absence of its own shepherd. In the event of 
congregations with no realistic prospect of financially supporting full-time clergy, other more 
feasible options should be sought instead of lay officiants, such as alternate routes like SMP, 
EIIT, Center for Hispanic Studies, or possibly the service of retired pastors, so that the 
congregation may have a regularly called and ordained pastor to carry out all the distinctive 
functions of the pastoral office for the spiritual benefit of its members. We also note the time-
honored practice of establishing a dual or multi-point parish with one or more similar 
congregations.  
Other practical guidelines may be suggested pertaining to the specific functions entailed by lay 
services. With respect to laymen reading sermons, they should only read sermons written by 
ordained synodical clergy, and it should be made clear—by way of a bulletin or public 
announcement—that this is the case. With respect to conducting worship services, the layman 
should not administer the Sacrament of the Altar, nor should he exercise the keys by 
pronouncing absolution. For these reasons, it is best to make use of non-communion orders of 
service, such as Matins, the Order of Morning Prayer, or the Service of Prayer and Preaching, 
which may be used by either ordained or lay officiants. (We note that LSB indicates the leader 
position in all these services with an “L” and not with a “P” as is the case in Divine Service –
Settings One through Five). The truncation of one of the five settings of the Divine Service in 
LSB to exclude Confession and Absolution and the Service of the Sacrament is possible, though 
not desirable due to the potential for incidental confusion.  
In order to facilitate a biblically and confessionally responsible use of this practice, the 
Commission urges other agencies of Synod to assist in providing resources to support it. First, 
the seminaries of Synod and the publishing arm of Synod would do well to consider establishing 
a digitally available database of full-text sermons corresponding to the appointed pericopes of 
the church year (both one-year and three-year). This would enable lay officiants to download and 
read biblically, confessionally faithful sermons from ordained clergy rather than having to rely 
upon a supervisory pastor to provide them one, especially in time-sensitive emergencies. It 
would also allow for a greater diversity of sermons from which to choose. Second, the 
responsible agencies of Synod, such as the Office of National Mission or Concordia Publishing 
House, could produce liturgical resources for use by lay officiants. These would ideally include 
other non-communion services designed for lay leadership that are based upon the current, more 
familiar settings of the Divine Service, as well as rubrics and training resources dedicated to 
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assist laymen with the conduct of services, use of vestments, and other matters where confusion 
with the pastoral office should be avoided. 
While the Commission does not believe the public reading of sermons or conduct of public 
services by laymen to be contradictory with the biblical and confessional standards for the 
pastoral office, nor to cause confusion with the pastoral office (given the basic caveats and 
guidelines noted above), it ultimately holds that this practice is neither desirable nor a long-term 
solution to the problem of current and future pastoral shortages. Among the many necessary 
qualifications of the pastoral office, the aptitude to teach stands out as particularly important 
within a confessional Lutheran tradition that has long valued preaching and the right division of 
God’s Word (2 Tim. 2:15). Congregations should eagerly desire a theologically trained, rightly 
called and ordained pastor to preach and teach the Word in a way that addresses that Word to 
their context. This requires both knowledge of the people pastorally and knowledge of the 
Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions theologically. The opinion offered here and its 
guidelines apply to legitimate emergency or temporary situations, so that the Word may be 
preached and the people of God edified in conformity with the biblical and confessional 
standards for the pastoral office. Yet it must not be viewed as an adequate regular or permanent 
substitute for the examined, called, and ordained pastor serving in the office of the public 
ministry. 
By way of postscript, the Commission regrets that it is unable to provide a satisfying answer to 
the more serious challenges many of our districts face, namely, the growing number of regions 
with a high volume of small or financially strained congregations, which are simply unable to 
afford a full-time pastor. Some are in rural areas that lack geographic proximity either to more 
populous areas with active clergy that might be able to help fill needs, or to potential sister 
congregations, with whom they might enter multipoint parish service. Others are in areas with
few retired (or even active) clergy to assist vacant congregations. These chronically underserved 
regions will for the foreseeable future continue to struggle filling pulpits and providing pastoral 
care. While the Commission understands the plight such congregations face, we are reluctant to 
propose this model of lay readers and officiants as a legitimate, long-term option, for the reasons 
cited throughout this opinion (the need for theologically trained clergy who are apt to teach and 
preach, the proper administration of the Sacrament of the Altar, regular pastoral care, etc.). The 
pastoral office is not an adiaphoron. The office of the public ministry has been instituted in Holy 
Scripture for the purpose of preaching the Word and administering the sacraments. In accordance 
with Augsburg Confession XIV, Lutheran congregations are to call ordained clergy to carry out 
these distinctive functions of the pastoral office in their midst. When they can no longer obtain 
the services of such clergy, the congregation must honestly and soberly reconsider its options for 
ongoing mission and ministry, however difficult and painful that may be.  
We do believe there are plausible solutions to such dilemmas that do not necessitate the 
permanent use of lay-led services, as imperfect and unsatisfying as those solutions may be. 
Options are available, even if they require creativity and adaptability on the part of pastor and 
congregation alike. For instance, we would propose the use of lay readers/officiants in 
conjunction with semi-regular conduct of services by an ordained pastor or circuit visitor. This 
might entail, for example, three lay-led services a month without the sacrament and a fourth 
clergy-led service with the sacrament. A congregation might also adopt a different service time
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to accommodate the presence of an ordained pastor from another congregation. Scripture does 
not necessitate that worship happen at a particular day or time each week. We are free to gather 
on any day and at any time for the church’s public services of Word and Sacrament. The 
Commission believes that such alternatives, while admittedly not optimal for clergy or 
congregants, are far preferable to strictly lay-led services because they provide the congregations 
with ordained clergy to meet their pastoral needs in a way that is consistent with Scripture and 
the Lutheran Confessions. This position is consistent with the assumed presupposition that 
undergirds the entire argument and conclusions of this response, namely that doctrinal fidelity to 
our Confession rather than the force of pragmatic concerns must norm our practice.  
Finally, the growing number of congregations that are not able to obtain regular pastoral care 
merits further attention and careful consideration. To this end, the Commission recommends
more formal discussions in the next triennium to address the larger issue of Lutheran theological 
foundations for mission and ministry, especially as those foundations are being challenged in a 
post-Christian culture, where religious participation is on the decline and where demographics 
are also rapidly changing. Such discussions might involve representatives of the CTCR, the 
Council of Presidents, the Pastoral Formation Committee, and the seminaries, among others. 
Conversation and collaboration between these parties could lead to the development of practical 
and educational solutions to this looming problem that are consistent with, and indeed derive 
from, those theological foundations.  
Adopted April 13, 2023