# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1981_S196
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

194 ADMINISTRATION

cedures, functions as editor of the convention Workbook, edits
Today’s Business, is deeply involved in structuring the agenda
of the convention, serves in the customary capacity of a
secretary during the convention, takes care of letters of notifi-
cation of election and other correspondence flowing from
convention actions, and edits the convention Proceedings. He
is designated as an advisory person to convention planning
committees.

2. Secretary of the Board of Directors. The board now meets
on a quarterly basis with an expanded agenda. The docket
usually fills a large-size ring binder plus additional materials.
Minutes are extensive. Some 75 letters must be sent after each
meeting, together with several hundred carbon copies, to those
most directly affected by the actions taken by the board. One of
the ongoing responsibilities here is that of keeping current the
large manual of policy statements. Additions and revisions are
transmitted after almost every meeting of the board to all
boards and commissions of the Synod and also at times to the
Districts, when they are involved in such statements.

3. Secretary of the Commission on Constitutional Matters.
This is a rather logical assignment given by the Synod in the
Handbook, since the secretary of an organization is usually
expected to be very familiar with its constitution and bylaws.
During the time of the synodical controversy the work of the
commission had become extemely important and quite bur-
densome. For a short period of time thereafter the situation
improved, but it seems that the agenda of the commission is
being crowded once again with questions of many different
kinds. In this process the Secretary is asked to play a major role
within the commission. He prepares the agenda, serves as
secretary of the commission, maintains copies of all opinions,
which now fill several file drawers, carries on correspondence
on the basis of past opinions of the commission, and bears the
primary share of work and responsibility in revising the
Handbook every two years to incorporate the changes intro-
duced by the convention.

4. Secretary of the Council of Administrators. This long-
standing provision of the Handbook became operative when
the position of synodical Secretary was filled on a regular
full-time basis. The council consists of the officers and chief
administrators at the synodical headquarters. In addition to
minutes and some correspondence, the principal involvement
is one of long and frequent meetings.

* * *

The Board of Directors has an Executive Committee as one
of its standing committees. The Secretary is a member and
secretary of that committee. He also served once again as a
member of Committee 2 (Organization, Policies, and Personnel)
of the Board of Directors.

The Secretary is responsible for keeping an updated manual
on convention elections. His office also maintains a complete
file of the membership of all boards and commissions, which is
of use to the Committee for Convention Nominations and to
various appointing authorities. He also carries by Bylaw
provison the major responsibility in administering the process
of nominating persons for President and First Vice-President
of the Synod every four years.

The 1979 convention of the Synod, in deciding that the work
of Task Force I should be continued in a somewhat different
direction, passed a resolution stipulating among other things
that the Secretary of the Synod should be a voting member of
Task Force II. At its first meeting the Task Force by secret
ballot elected him as its chairman. This has been a particularly
burdensome and time-consuming assignment. The amount of
work which the Task Force was asked to undertake seemed to
be almost insurmountable. As this is being written in January
the Task Force has already spent 34 days in plenary meetings
since September 1979—more than a month within little more
than one year. One may well assume that much work also
needed to be done between meetings and in preparation for the
process of decision-making.

During the past biennium the Secretary of the Synod had
the responsibility for carrying out the process of constitutional
amendments voted by the 1979 convention; these needed to be
ratified by the congregations of the Synod. This ratification
was forthcoming.

The Secretary continued to serve as chairman of the
Division of Church Government, a position which has tra-
ditionally been filled by one of the elected officers of the Synod.
The following groups are included within this division: the
Council of Presidents, the Commission on Constitutional
Matters, the Commission of Adjudication, the Board of
Appeals, the Synodical Services Commission, the Board of
Doctrinal Review, the Committee for Convention Nominations,
Concordia Historical Institute, and the Archives Department
of the Synod.

He has also continued to serve as one of the Missouri Synod
representatives to the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. After
completing his third and final one-year term as secretary of the
Council, he was elected president in May 1979 and is at the
present time in his second term. As a result of such service in
the Council, he continued to prepare for the meetings of the
Board of Directors reports on important meetings of various
standing committees of the Council and of the Council itself, so
that the board could be kept informed.

Early in 1979 the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. convened
an important consultation on church and state which met for
three consecutive months for three days at a time. A document
was developed as a result of this consultation, underlining the
separation of church and state but also emphasizing that there
is an important interrelationship between church and state,
especially under our modern American form of government.

Largely asa result of this service the President of the Synod
appointed the Secretary to officially monitor church and state
relations.

Also presumably as a result of this activity he was appointed
toward the end of 1980 to a 17-member commission in the State
of Missouri dealing with safeguarding the rights of the accused,
of the press, and of the public in court trials. He is one of three
representatives of the public-at-large, replacing a state senator
who resigned because of ill health. The commission is chaired
by a justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri.

President Preus appointed the Secretary to serve as his
personal representative on the three-man Personnel Committee
at headquarters. This is an assignment which took a tre-
mendous amount of time because a new system of position
descriptions, point evaluation of positions, and performance
evaluation was introduced during the past biennium. No doubt
this system wil] need further attention and refinement.

The Board of Directors recently appointed the Secretary to
serve as a coeditor of the Lutheran Annual. This was prompted
partly by the fact that he is often called upon to deal with roster
problems and questions.

He continued to serve as the chairman of aspecial committee
dealing with the problems arising from the decision of Grace
Lutheran Congregation, River Forest, to leave the Synod and
to become an independent congregation. By the time the
Workbook appears, the issue may have been settled in the
courts.

The Board of Directors created a special committee to
wrestle with the growing problem of how to assist persons
coming on the synodical payroll in securing housing in a
market with exorbitant mortgage-interest rates. The Secretary
functioned as chairman of that special committee.

He also continued as the liaison of the board with the
Canadian units of the Synod, which have under active dis-
cussion the possibility of becoming an independent partner
church in Canada.

One of his happier assignments is to serve as an advisory
member of the Board of Governors of Concordia Historical
Institute.

Perhaps even more stimualting is the opportunity at regular
intervals to lecture to seminary students on the Constitution,
Bylaws, and polity of the Synod.

During the biennium the Secretary was available once
again to represent the President at District conventions,
although he was not called upon to do so.

At the request of the Personnel Committee of the Board of
Directors he developed a manual of style for use by the
secretaries and typists in the headquarters operation.

At the beginning of 1981 the members of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod Foundation elected the undersigned
to the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, which promptly
elected him in turn as secretary of the board and of its executive