# LCMS Commission on Constitutional Matters Minutes_St. Louis Missouri_January 25 26 2013_S38
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Constitution).
(1) Agencies include each board, commission, council, seminary, university, college,
district, Concordia Plan Services, and each synodwide corporate entity.
(2) The term “agency of the Synod” does not describe or imply the existence of principal
and agency arrangements as defined under civil law.
(b) Chief Executive: The top staff administrator of an a separately incorporated agency of
the Synod, who may be referred to as president, other than a mission board or commission.
(c) Commission: A group of persons, elected or appointed as prescribed in the Bylaws,
rendering a precisely defined service function of the Synod and responsible, as the case may
be, to the Synod in convention, to the President of the Synod, or to the Board of Directors of
the Synod. The commissions of the Synod are:
(1) Commission on Constitutional Matters
(2) Commission on Doctrinal Review
(3) Commission on Handbook
(4) Commission on Theology and Church Relations
(d) Concordia Plans: Concordia Plan Services is a controlled entity of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod created to manage the Concordia Plans. The Concordia Plans,
while operating under the supervision of the Synod Board of Directors, are trust agencies
whose assets are not the property of corporate Synod.
(ed) Corporate Synod: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the Missouri nonprofit
corporation, including its offices, boards, commissions and the departments operating under
the supervision of the Board of Directors of the Synod and its mission boards and
commissions.
(1) “Corporate Synod” is not an agency of the Synod.
(2) Concordia Plan Services is a controlled entity of The Lutheran Church—Missouri
Synod created to manage the Concordia Plans.
(3) The Concordia Plans, while operating under the supervision of the Synod Board of
Directors, are trust agencies whose assets are not the property of corporate Synod.
(24) The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, in referencing the laws of the State of
Missouri in these Bylaws and in the Synod’s Articles of Incorporation, intends to
acknowledge its responsibility to be subject to civil authority. In all such references,
however, the Synod intends to retain all authority and autonomy allowed a church under the
laws and Constitution of the United States and the State of Missouri.
(fe) Council: An officially established group elected or appointed as an advisory body. The
council of the Synod is the Council of Presidents.
(gf) District: A division of the Synod as determined by a national convention of the Synod.
(hg) Ecclesiastical supervision: The responsibility, primarily of the President of the Synod
and district presidents, to supervise on behalf of the Synod the doctrine, life, and
administration of its members, officers, and agencies. Such supervision, subject to the
provisions of the Synod’s Constitution, Bylaws, and resolutions, includes visitation,
evangelical encouragement and support, care, protection, counsel, advice, admonition, and,
when necessary, appropriate disciplinary measures to assure that the Constitution, Bylaws,
and resolutions of the Synod are followed and implemented. Thus, ecclesiastical supervision
is also the presenting, interpreting, and applying of the collective will of the Synod’s
congregations. Ecclesiastical supervision does not include the responsibility to observe,
monitor, control, or direct the day-to-day activities of individual members of the Synod,
whether in the conduct of their work or in their private lives (cf. Bylaw 2.14.1 [a]). Further,
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