# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2019_S83 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS president chairing the CTCR and two faculty serving as Committee chairs). •• The continued publication of Concordia Theological Quarterly, praised internationally as a very significant journal for fostering confessional Lutheranism. •• Accreditation for all of its academic programs through the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. This year, CTSFW is engaged again in a significant self-study in preparation for its next accreditation visit in 2020. CTSFW has served the Synod faithfully by making the blessings of the church available to a world in need of Christ’s salvation. We rejoice that our Lord has redeemed us with His precious blood. We pray for our Synod, our seminary, and for those who do not yet know Jesus. Finally, we give thanks—for you!—and for the myriad ways we have been “blest through endless ages” (LSB 433). We invite you to get to know CTSFW. Visit our website at www.ctsfw.edu or our campus where you will find a vibrant, Christ-centered theological community that engages and resources the church and world, domestically and internationally, with distinctively Lutheran teaching, practice, and worship. Join with CTSFW bringing the saving Gospel into all the world by forming servants in Jesus Christ who will teach the faithful, reach the lost, and care for all. Lawrence R. Rast Jr., President nance in service of the same, and we implore Christ’s continued help in what is an enormous and complicated task. The Secretary of the Synod serves ex officio on the Board of Directors and the Concordia Historical Institute Board of Governors and with the CCM and Commission on Handbook, assists the Council of Presidents, and is involved in many task forces and other efforts; as these are reported on elsewhere and by others, these activities are not reported here. Rosters, Statistics, and Research Services The Department of Rosters, Statistics, and Research Services, assigned to the Office of the Secretary in the 2013–2016 triennium, provides the core “organ of recollection and administration” for roster, leadership, contact, and statistical information related to congregations, individual members, schools, districts, and other agencies and affiliated entities of the Synod. Some of this information is published in The Lutheran Annual or to the Synod webpage; some is utilized by districts and others in the Synod for administrative and research purposes. The triennium now concluding has been a period of significant transition for the department, both in terms of personnel and in terms of technology and scope of work. Senior Director Gene Weeke retired in October 2018, passing the baton to Scott Kostencki. Technologically, the department •• brought online for the Council of Presidents a new “Commissioned Minister Information Form” (CMIF) system designed to provide information on the education, capabilities, interests, and service records of commissioned ministers and to enhance the access of districts, congregations, schools, and other calling entities to this information as they carry out critical call and ecclesiastical supervision tasks. •• transitioned, with significant work by LCMS Information Technology, from the Oracle-based and design-limited LCMS Rosters and Statistics System (LRSS) to a new SQL-based LCMS Information Support Network (LISN), deployed in 2018, a new core system designed with best-in-class interfaces to improve operational efficiencies and to accommodate incorporation of primarily online services to congregations, individual members, districts, and other stakeholders. •• developed the concept of a “single-login model,” built up around LISN, to enable those who interact with Synod data and official processes to do so in a more consistent, confident, and convenient manner. •• implemented “Church Worker Update” and the annual congregational statistics gathering process in the new “single-login model,” with “sanity-checked” direct updating to LISN, reducing departmental labor, improving district communication, and improving the ease of entry and assurance of data entered. •• strove, with great assistance from district offices, for unanimous participation in congregational statistics gathering (Bylaw 1.3.4.3), which was achieved in two districts for the 2019 edition of The Lutheran Annual, and developed new processes to support the congre- R5 Secretary Duties and Responsibilities The Office of the Secretary is a constitutional office of the Synod and, with the Department of Rosters, Statistics, and Research Services (reporting to the Secretary) and the Department of Archives and History (on whose board the Secretary serves ex officio), a significant portion of its “organ of recording and recollection.” This organ, along with the grace of God and the labor of many, is necessary to the continued success of what was and remains a bold endeavor of a common faith, a synodical union that is confessional and constitutional. First, every member “accepts without reservation” the Scriptures as “the only rule and norm of faith and of practice” and the Lutheran Confessions as an “unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God” (Constitution, Art. II 1–2). Second, the Constitution of the Synod establishes the congregations’ means of governance for shared institutions and the basic means by which the congregations’ fundamental needs are to be met—for themselves and their pastors and teachers to be held honestly to the standards of their confession in all aspects of faith and practice, for the raising up of pastors and teachers, etc., and for the use of “the diversities of gifts … for the common profit” (Preamble). The many and varied activities of the Office of the Secretary have as their common aim the upholding of every aspect of the congregations’ confessional and constitutional commitments and objectives and the maintenance of orderly gover- 83 2019 Convention Workbook