Official Workbook PDF page source text

LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 79

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 consti-
tutional 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 busi-
ness processes, administers dispute resolution and expulsion pro-
cesses, supervises the maintenance of the Synod’s official rosters 
and statistical information, and retains documents on Synod’s agen-
cies, while performing “such other work as pertains to his office” 
or “as the Synod in convention, the President, or the Board of Di-
rectors may assign to him” (Bylaws 3.3.3, 3.3.3.2). It is a demand-
ing 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 proj-
ects—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, en-
tities, 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 con-
gregations 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 (South-
eastern, 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 pas-
tors’ 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 Syn-
od (Constitution Article XI D) and, with the Department of Ros-
ters, 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 agen-
cies 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 con-
gregations 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 full-
ness of Christ,” together “into Him who is the head, into Christ” 
(Eph. 4:13). This involves, at our scale, a constitutional framework