# LCMS Commission on Constitutional Matters Minutes_St. Louis Missouri_May 12 2017_S10
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the process are concerned. Given that, there is no ground here, either, for denying to the President of the
Synod the authority to carry out this duty, should a district president fail to.
6. Various Precedential Opinions of the Commission on Constitutional Matters
CCM Ag. 1970 and Op. 03-2338, 03-2338A, 03-2338C, 03-2354, 10-2581, 13-2669, and 15-2750 are cited
in the request for reconsideration as concluding “that the Synod President does not have ecclesiastical
supervision of an individual member of the Synod.” The commission responds:
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Ag. 1970 (October 16, 1993) concludes that “When the President of a District is properly dealing
with a pastor according to the Constitution and Bylaws of the Synod [Emphasis original to Ag.
1970] the Constitution and Bylaws of the Synod do not allow the congregation, the pastor, or the
office of the synodical President to circumvent the office of the District President and deal directly
with that pastor and the conflicted congregation. The Commission, however, calls attention to
Bylaw 2.27 b which allows for a complaint to be brought to the Praesidium [the bylaw procedure
between 1989–2004] if there is a call for suspension of a member and if the district president
declines to suspend the member or fails to act within 90 days after the receipt of the written
complaint.” Ag. 1970 (while it accommodates itself to the substation, at the time, of the Praesidium
for the President) thus upholds the basic principle of CCM Op. 16-2791 as well as the approach to
limit the President of the Synod’s role to situations in which the district president has clearly failed
to act or declined to suspend.

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Op. 03-2338, 03-2338A, and 03-2338C revisited Op. 02-2309, which concluded that “having
promised supervision and counsel, the Synod is precluded from taking any action to terminate the
membership of its member who, when performing his/her official duties, follows the advice and
counsel of the ecclesiastical supervisor designated by the Synod.” The opinion notes, however, as
later underscored by the 2010 Convention in its Res. 7-02 (Proceedings, pp. 145–148), that should
advice later be corrected, “The member should then be held to consider the corrected counsel.
Failure to consider such amended admonition could form the basis for disciplinary action as
provided in Article XIII.” Should, in application of the bylaws developed under Res. 12-14, the
Synod President find grounds to suspend a member who had acted on the advice of his district
president, the constitutional requirement of “previous futile admonition” would, of course, apply
at that time, and suspension would not be appropriate until such requirement had been satisfied. All
ecclesiastical supervision is, of course, no matter which district president or the President of the
Synod performs it, under the same standard, as subscribed in the Scriptures and Lutheran
Confessions and as elaborated in Synod’s doctrinal statements and resolutions.

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Op. 03-2354 deals with dissent from opinions of the Commission on Constitutional Matters, and
then, in passing, with the question of whether the President of the Synod is an “ecclesiastical
supervisor” over the individual members of the Synod (other than other Synod officers and district
presidents). It concludes, on the basis of 2001 Bylaw 4.73, which states that the district presidents
“shall supervise…” that the President of the Synod is not an ecclesiastical supervisor “over the
individual members of the Synod.” This language is itself problematic and should not be understood
outside the context of this opinion, as of course he did—and does—supervise some individual
members directly (see 2001 Bylaw 2.27 [g] and 2016 Bylaw section 2.15). This opinion also fails
to address the constitutional authority of the President under Const. XI B 1–3 or such bylaws as
have been proposed under Res. 12-14, in accordance with Const. XIII 2, to implement that
authority.

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Op. 10-2581 notes that “the ecclesiastical supervision duties of the President of the Synod as
regards the Synod as a whole are also the ecclesiastical supervision duties of a district president in
his district,” cites Const. Art. XI B 3–4, and comments, apparently on this analogy, “A district
president has primary responsibility to supervise the doctrine and practice of the congregations in
his district, to advise and admonish, and, if necessary, to take action to discipline up to and

CCM Minutes – May 12, 2017 – Page 49