# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_2001_S177
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

STRUCTURE, PLANNING, AND ADMINISTRATION
i. encouraging the development of continuing-education models in Districts and other appropriate entities and agencies that have potential for synodwide use;
j. seeking out, identifying, coordinating, and publicizing the current programs of ministerial growth offered by the schools, Districts, boards, and agencies
supported or sponsored by the Synod;
k. assisting colleges, universities, seminaries,
boards, and agencies by supporting effective existing
programs and in their planning of new ministerialgrowth programs;
l. developing and sponsoring ministerial-growth programs of general value to the Synod, using the resources of the Synod, including Concordia Publishing
House;
m. seeking grants from outside sources for continuing education funding and the Continuing Education
Endowment Fund;
n. encouraging Districts and congregations to make
full use of available preventive and therapeutic care for
professional church workers and their families.

PROPOSED WORDING
3.913 Membership
The Commission on Ministerial Growth and Support
exists to provide opportunity for the continuing educational and vocational growth of the church’s workers, to
advocate and facilitate care and counsel for the church’s
workers to support them in the performance of their official duties, and to advocate and facilitate support for
the personal well-being of the church’s workers and
their family members.
The Commission on Ministerial Growth and Support
shall consist of thirteen members: three ordained ministers who shall be parish pastors, three commissioned
ministers (two teachers, one other than a teacher),
three laypersons (one of whom shall be a parish pastor’s
wife), one District President, two seminary faculty
members (one from each seminary), and one Concordia
University System faculty member. The members shall
be appointed by the President of the Synod.
3.915 Functions
The Commission on Ministerial Growth and Support
shall fulfill the following objectives:
a. It shall assist and encourage the church’s workers in the planning of their continuing educational and
vocational growth and the personal well-being of them
and their family members.
b. It shall assist and encourage congregations in assessing and promoting the continuing educational and
vocational growth of the church’s workers and the personal well-being of them and their family members.
c. It shall assist and encourage Districts in the development of support systems for the continuing educational and vocational growth of the church’s workers

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and the personal well-being of them and their family
members.
d. It shall provide opportunities and settings for the
church’s workers to continue to grow in Christ and in
the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and personal wellbeing they need to serve Him in His church.
e. It shall develop, sponsor, and coordinate continuing educational and vocational growth and personal
well-being initiatives among the entities of the Synod
whose work impacts the church’s workers and their
families.
f. It shall seek grants and maintain funds from outside sources for the support of its objectives when it
deems necessary to do so.

Resolved, That the Synod in convention adopt the revised Bylaws as presented above to replace the current Bylaws of the Handbook and authorize the Secretary of the
Synod to bring other parts of the synodical Handbook into
conformity with these revisions, as needed.
Action: Adopted (5)
(The resolution was adopted without amendment [yes: 1,030;
no: 30].)

To Add Six Members
to Synodical Nominations Committee
RESOLUTION 7-32
Overture L7-146 (TB, pp. 39–40)
WHEREAS, The current system of electing the synodical
Nominations Committee by the Districts has only been in
use a decade; and while it has given voice to individual Districts, it has excluded the Synod in convention from having
any voice in the nominations process; therefore be it
Resolved, That Bylaw 3.980 a be amended to read as follows:
a. The Synod in convention shall elect six members
of the Committee. In addition, seventeen of the Districts shall elect through their regular election procedures at the District convention one member of the
Committee, plus an alternate. For the next convention,
the other eighteen Districts shall elect in the same
manner. Half of the electing Districts shall be designated by the Secretary of the Synod to elect a professional church worker and the other half a layperson,
with roles reversed every six years.

and be it further
Resolved, That this election of “at large” members begin
with the 2004 convention of the Synod.
Action: Declined (5)
(The resolution was defeated [yes: 324; no: 780].)

200l Convention Proceedings