# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1965_S210
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

210 UNPUBLISHED REPORTS AND OVERTURES

[4-51 Un]
To Limit Administrative and Other Duties
of the President of the Synod

Wuereas, Any pastor, faithful to the duties of his
office, realizes to his chagrin that in the milieu of the
ministry as constituted in our day there is precious little
time available for reaching always greater, desirable,
and necessary maturity in the always more developing
complexities of the theological spectrum now even
placed before the eyes of the laity to its confusion in
such an attractive and popular manner as done in Life
magazine (Dec. 1964); and

Wuereas, To a much larger degree it must be evident
even to anyone not closely associated with the Presi-
dency of the Synod but receiving his impressions alone
through reading of the President’s activities (his neces-
sary travels, the interminable prescribed meetings, the
voluminous correspondence, the desirable acceptance of
invitations to Synod-related and other functions, as-
semblies, etc., where his presence is almost mandatory,
the intersynodical confrontations, etc., etc. —all these
and many more and for which, in most cases mentioned,
a responsibility so great rests upon him for both his
every word and action as to require a special measure
of the Spirit’s unction) that, even with the eminent
qualifications he brings to this high office and when
these are expended to the utmost, there is not the time
he himself must crave for uninterrupted study and
prayer to evaluate properly his attitudes, positions, and
decisions on issues daily confronting him and on which
the weal or woe of the Synod may very well depend; and

Wuereas, The exercising of “supervision over the
doctrine taught in the Synod” is the first-mentioned
among the President’s duties and hence may be pre-
sumed in the eyes of the Synod to be the foremost of his
responsibilities; and inasmuch as that duty, if he is
to wisely and conscientiously fulfill it (as we firmly
believe he does), demands more now than ever in the
so complex theological situation existing among theo-
logians of repute and disrepute in America and abroad
a penetrating, Spirit-endowed acumen enabling a pre-
cise sifting of the true from the false in the supreme
interest of our Synod’s continuing orthodoxy, and hence
requiring so thorough a grasp of modern foci of theology
as only intensive and constant study under much prayer
could achieve and for which many more hours of con-
centrated application to the task would be needed than
the President can make available to himself, especially
with a decision-shy Commission on Theology and
Church Relations offering little help; and

Wuereas, It might be objected that, in the above
regard, one man carries a similar burden of duties in
a numerically even larger Lutheran body, it should be
remembered that the organizational setup differs funda-
mentally — the parent body in this instance being com-
posed of synods whose respective presidents have the
direct oversight and hence the responsibility in their

respective areas which we impose on our lone synodical
President — the very comparison serving to make even
more impressive the utter impossibility of one human
being doing full justice to the tasks we so blithely assign
him; therefore be it

Resolved, That as large.a part of the President’s ad-
ministrative and other duties (and/or elements devolv-
ing therefrom) as is consonant with the holding of that
office be definitely committed to the office of the First
Vice-President under an arrangement similar to that
in force at the present in the case of the President
whereby the former may also delegate some of these
duties to the Second, Third or Fourth Vice-President;
and be it further

Resolved, That, on the order of a bishop in his dio-
cese, the District Presidents be made to assume full
responsibility for doctrine in their areas, distinct from
any responsibility on the part of Synod’s President
(except as [while deleting Art. XI, B, c] subdivision d
would apply) —the latter’s responsibility otherwise,
so far as supervision of doctrine is concerned, to extend
only to our colleges and seminaries (where ordinarily
the stamp for the whole church is set); which restriction
of responsibility would lend emphasis to the present
phrasing in the Bylaws: “supervision over the doctrine
taught in the Synod”; and be it finally

Resolved, That the Committee on Constitutional
Matters frame the necessary changes in the Handbook
to implement this proposal and bring such changes be-
fore this convention for ratification.

Circuit TWENTY

SoutHern Cauirornia District
Joun C. Jacossen, Counselor
Rocer B. ScHaum, Secretary

[4-52 Un]
Appendix G to Report of Board of Directors

Mass Media in Mission Survey

This survey was initiated so recently that it is possi-
ble now to provide only a very preliminary report. Sur-
vey work was actually undertaken on April 1, 1965.

In establishing the scope of the study we have de-
fined the mass media to include: television; radio; the
print media — newspapers, books, magazines; audiovis-
ual — sound films, filmstrips, billboards, and so on. The
study will concentrate on the use of these media for
outreach purposes and will initially emphasize work
in overseas areas.

It has been possible to make limited progress in three
facets of the total study, the first of which has been the
definition of a preliminary research design for the sur-
vey. In this connection it has been determined that any
analysis of the total synodical effort must include de-
tailed reference to the related activities of synodical
auxiliaries, local groups, and individuals. The auxiliary
agencies and all others so far contacted in the study

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