Task Force on Structure Listens to Feedback

    

The LCMS Blue Ribbon Task Force on Structure and Governance delivered its final report to the church October 15.  It can be found on Synod’s website by clicking here.

It is apparent that the Task Force members took seriously the feedback from about 7,400 participants in the district conventions held last spring and summer.  The report is 50 pages long with a renumbering and reformulation of now 21 recommendations.  Extensive explanation is given to each, including response to questionnaire results.

The questionnaire had forty nine specific recommendations grouped under 20 major topics.  Only nine of those forty nine had significant disagreement, defined here as more than a third of the respondents.

The most resistance (52%) was in response to having the district president appoint circuit counselors.  New Recommendation #3 restores the election of circuit counselors to the circuit forum and districts, with the district presidents participating through the nomination process.

The second most resistance (47%) was to giving two additional votes at the district convention to congregations with 1,000 or more confirmed members.  The Task Force points out that the same proposal also would give potentially twice as many more votes to small congregations in a multi-parish situation and with a pastoral vacancy.  Recommendation #6 will put to a vote at the synodical convention this combination of changes to delegate representation.

Two proposals strongly resisted (46%) were to have no term limits for nationally elected board and commission members and to have the president and vice president elected as a team.

Recommendation # 12 establishes four-year terms (according to the new convention cycle) for such members and says nothing about term limits.

Recommendation #13 proposes a whole new congregation-based nomination process for president and vice presidents.  Elected first, the president can choose five of the top twenty vice president nominees, who will then stand for election by the convention delegates

The remaining original proposals that brought significant disagreement had to do with reducing the number of districts and changing the name of the Synod.  Both are no longer in the new recommendations.  Instead Recommendation #4 establishes a new task force to study future district configuration and bring their recommendation to the next synodical convention.  Recommendation #20 is to establish a process leading to the renaming of the Synod and suggests that action be taken at the convention  that re-configures districts.  Three out of five respondents did favor a name change.

One other change that was not originally controversial but may become so is to allow commissioned ministers to be one of the two delegates of a congregation at the district convention.  They were proposed to be included as lay delegate.  But the Synod’s classification of them as commissioned ministers (ultimately for tax purposes) clearly defines them as other than lay.  If they are to be included (something much desired according to feedback), the only alternative is as a congregation’s pastoral delegation to the district convention.  This is Recommendation #5.

The conclusion from this analysis is that almost all of the new recommendations will not be seriously controversial.  The Task Force adopted a good process that should allow delegates to experience a growing sense of unity at the 2010 Synod Convention.  The next step in that harmony-building process is to present and discuss these recommendations at regional meetings of the newly elected delegates in December, January and February.

Jesus First Publication Team