# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2019_S188
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

I. OPINIONS OF COMMISSION ON CONSTITUTIONAL MATTERS

practice; cf. Bylaws 1.10.8; 2.14.8; 2.15.8; 2.17.8). The argument,
therefore, that because the President of the Synod is granted no
explicit supervision of the life of those in the districts, he can
have no backup supervision over their doctrine and practice, is
clearly without merit.
••

Of present interest is the ability of the President of
the Synod to initiate formal proceedings only when
the district president has failed to act or declined to
suspend. This is not a procedurally primary authority, on par and simultaneous with that of the district
president, but a backup authority, intended to see
to the carrying out of Synod’s objectives (especially
Const. Art. III 1, 8, and 9) when a district officer has
failed, given every reasonable chance to carry out his
responsibility in this regard, to do so—when, that is,
he has failed to apply to a particular case within his
district the one standard of doctrine and practice the
Synod has set forth by its subscription to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions and elaborated
by its doctrinal resolutions and statements.

Const. Art. XII 7 reads, “The district presidents shall,
moreover, especially exercise supervision over the doctrine, life,
and administration of office of the ordained and commissioned
ministers of their district and acquaint themselves with the religious conditions of the congregations of their district …” Thus,
while district presidents have fundamentally the same office as,
or an extension of the office of, the President of the Synod,
“but only insofar as [the rights and duties of that office] apply
to the district and only within the boundaries of their districts,”
they are not equally (with respect to the President of the Synod)
but especially8 charged with the supervision of members within
their districts.
The question is not whether the President of the Synod
has the same authority as the district presidents, but whether
he has the authority, should they fail, to carry out properly the
due process disciplinary action required and intended to see to
the maintenance of “unity of doctrine and practice in all the
districts of the Synod.” We are thus dealing with an exceptional case, like the long-recognized one that, should a district or
Synod president be shown to have a conflict of interest in a potential expulsion case, a vice-president should act in his stead.
While not explicit in Const. Art. XII 7–8, this provision is necessarily understood as contained implicitly and organically within
the concise constitutional framework. The Constitution does
not, after all, invest a man with authority but creates offices to
further the Synod’s purposes. The argument, therefore, that the
President of the Synod cannot have backup authority, in an exceptional circumstance (namely, when an accuser protests that
a district president has not acted appropriately in response to
charges laid against a member under his supervision), because
Const. Art. XII 7–8 does not say so, is also untenable.
Thus, the properly focused question is: Does the Synod
President have a constitutional authority, in a matter involving
doctrine and practice, and when the district president charged
with supervision fails to act or declines to suspend a member, to
initiate formal proceedings against (i.e., suspend) the member?
CCM Op. 16-2791 answered in the affirmative, on the basis of
the convention’s 1956 determination that, at least in those circumstances, such action by the President of the Synod would be
2019 Convention Workbook

“by virtue of the power given him in the Constitution (Article
XI B 1–3).”9 The commission finds no compelling reason in the
assertions of the request for reconsideration to find otherwise,
answering the substantive arguments of the request as follows:

3. Suspension Power of the President of the
Synod under Present Bylaws
It should be noted that in the present bylaws of the Synod,
certain individual members of the Synod are already under the
direct supervision of, and may be suspended by, the President of
the Synod. These include the other officers of the Synod and the
district presidents (Const. Art. XI B 1 a and d; Bylaws 2.15.1,
6).10 Here a power of suspension (extending over certain individual members) has been elaborated in the bylaws as belonging
to the President of the Synod—a power that has not been and
is not challenged. What is now Bylaw section 2.15, including the
suspension of district presidents and officers by the President
of the Synod, was incorporated into the bylaws by 2004 Res.
8-01A. The prefatory remarks by the floor committee offer the
following:
The renumbered Bylaw 2.27 replaces what had
been 2.27 g and provides the recommended procedures for the removal of a District President
and seeks to clarify the role of the President of
Synod in the process believed to be inherent in
Constitution Articles XI B 2 and 7 and XIII 2.
This bylaw provides the framework for what is
called for in Constitution Article XI B 7 which
states, “The President shall perform all additional duties assigned to him by the bylaws . . .” and
Article XIII 2 which states, “Expulsion shall be
executed only after following such procedure as
shall be set forth in the Bylaws of Synod.” (2004
Proceedings, p. 163)
Thus the 2003 Task Force on Ecclesiastical Supervision
and Dispute Resolution and the 2004 Convention answered the
question included in the floor committee’s prefatory material,
as to whether “the President of the Synod is granted authority
in the Constitution to suspend or expel a district president or
anyone else from the roster of Synod” (idem, p. 161), clearly in
the affirmative (at least in the case of a district president or officer of the Synod, and given the proper bylaw procedure). The
constitution’s explicit assignment of the authority of suspension to the district president, within the sphere of his district,
in Const. Art. XII 8 was not understood to preclude enactment
of bylaws in which the President of the Synod exercised, at
least in certain circumstances, the power of suspension. Such
bylaws were explained to be permissible under Const. Art. XI
B 2 and 7 and XIII 2.11,12 True, the convention actions of 2004
did not enact bylaw procedures for the President of the Synod
to suspend members within the districts when district presidents
would not. But they did rely on—even on the basis of a cogent
constitutional argument, distinct from but compatible with that
of Op. 16-2791—the power of the President of the Synod to
suspend and initiate formal proceedings against a member of
the Synod. Again, the substance of Op. 16-2791, Res. 12-14, and
the attendant bylaw proposal is not overthrown but supported
by analogy to present bylaws and the constitutional justification
offered for their adoption.