Official Workbook PDF page source text

2026 Convention Workbook 44

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS

capable of supporting the ecclesiastical work this involves. The President is responsible for ecclesiastical supervision (Const. Art.

XI B 1–3). The Board of Directors handles property, business, and legal matters (Const. Art. XI E 2) so the work of the Church can be less concerned with “civilian pursuits.” The Secretary’s work is specified but not so neatly bundled by the Constitution and Bylaws.

But much of it comprises the necessary maintenance of the constitutional framework on which all else hangs, and in which a broad and diverse and long-running Synod of sinful people, if we are truly “joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:16).

The Secretary, with the help of his office, carries out “all the customary duties of a corporate secretary” for corporate Synod, serves on the Board of Directors of the Synod, facilitates most of the official convention nomination, election, registration, and business processes, administers dispute resolution and expulsion processes, supervises the maintenance of the Synod’s official rosters and statistical information, and retains documents on Synod’s agencies, while performing “such other work as pertains to his office” or “as the Synod in convention, the President, or the Board of Directors may assign to him” (Bylaws 3.3.3, 3.3.3.2). It is a demanding office, even at the “minimum” defined in the Constitution and

Bylaws of the Synod. The office proper consists of the Secretary;

an assistant to the secretary, Christian Boehlke—a new addition in this triennium, which has already proven to be useful in helping the office achieve electronic form submission and support major higher education governance and corporate formation requirement projects—and one office administrator, Lori Leighton, without whom I could not do. I am blessed and the Synod is blessed that the office has the support it has. There is never a slow day. We live by grace and sometimes have to ask for patience.

B. Analysis and Technological Advance The Synod convention and the Synod offices, districts, entities, and educational institutions, if they are to make wise and forward-looking decisions, must be properly informed by facts.

The Synod has from its inception provided for the gathering and publishing of information on Lutheranism in America. The office continues to encourage submission of annual parochial statistics, which continues at a steadier 70–75 percent submission rate, with statistics less than three years old available for 85 percent of congregations and 93 percent of confirmed membership. This remains far below the “unanimous” expectation of Bylaw 1.3.4.3, particu - larly in the Eastern, Northwest, Southern Illinois, Minnesota North, California-Nevada-Hawaii, and English Districts, in which both more than 20 percent of congregations and more than 20 percent of people have not been reported on in at least three years (Southeastern, South Dakota, Texas, and Southern Districts lack recent

reports on more than 20 percent of congregations, but not more

than 20 percent of their people). As we try to understand the impact of events like COVID-19—from which attendance is now finally, largely, on aggregate, recovering to trend lines—or investigate the implications of change on things like circuit health and parameters, which we did this triennium, this is a significant impediment. It is but one of many areas in which congregational disengagement threatens our ability to serve as Synod as the congregations have asked and need.

As circuit parameters for this convention have been discussed extensively in white papers prepared for the 2023 Res. 9-06A Cir - cuit Alignment Task Force, I’ll not report further on that here.

• attended funerals for two former Synod vice-presidents, a retired district president, a sitting district president, and a former member of the Board of Directors, among others;

• attended regional meetings of district presidents;

• attended the October 2024 International Church Relations Conference in Wittenberg, Germany;

• participated in, and in some cases presented at, district pastors’ conferences;

• participated in the annual conversation between leaders of the LCMS, Wisconsin Synod, and Evangelical Lutheran Synod;

• participated in two mission trips to the Dominican Republic;

and • attended the 2025 March for Life in Washington, D.C., along with the district presidents (or their representatives) of every district;

o At least one vice-president attends the March for Life in Washington, D.C., annually, normally along with the Synod President.

Lastly, in addition to frequent communication via electronic means, the Praesidium strives to meet in conjunction with each COP meeting to give opportunity for the vice-presidents’ role as advisors to the President. When there are more urgent matters, the Praesidium has also met by internet conference.

In all it does to assist the President, the Praesidium strives to keep at the forefront the pure proclamation of the Gospel—that Jesus Christ was crucified to make atonement for the sins of the world and that Christ Is Risen Indeed!

Peter K. Lange, First Vice-President

R4

Secretary The Office of the Secretary is a constitutional office of the Synod (Constitution Article XI D) and, with the Department of Rosters, Statistics, and Research Services (reporting to the Secretary;

see Report R4.1) and the Department of Archives and History (on whose board the Secretary serves ex officio), a significant portion of its “organ of recording, recollection, and regulation.” A. Constitutional and Customary Duties The Synod is first and foremost a confessional union. It is also a constitutional one, the offices, boards, commissions, and agencies being specifically empowered by the member congregations to serve them and on their behalf. The well-being and well-func - tioning of the whole as a confessional union, in which the congregations are served with what they need and the service on their behalf is what they have authorized, depends on the health of the constitutional part. While the polity of a church can take many forms, fundamental to each is that one runs only as sent to run, and that offices are received and not assumed. The structure of a church, to be worthy of being called that, must be able to regulate the teaching and practice, to keep the whole growing up “until we all attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” together “into Him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:13). This involves, at our scale, a constitutional framework