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LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 113

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

the Synod. In place of appeal to conventions, appeals
from a district Board of Appeals went to the Synod
Board of Appeals.
Following conventions again regularly refined the
process, while leaving it essentially intact until 1992.
The 1992 convention adopted a new process of dispute
resolution. With the adoption of this new process, a
change was also made in the authority to make the final
decision regarding removal from membership. This
decision was now assigned to a dispute resolution
panel, consisting of three Synod reconcilers, selected as
prescribed in the bylaws.
Virtually every following convention made
adjustments to the process without a major change
until 2004, when the convention adopted an entirely
new process in which the final decision regarding
expulsion from membership was now placed into the

Convention Essays

hands of a panel of three district presidents. The new
process also again shifted the right of an appeal from a
failure of a district president to take action, this time,
transferring it from the Praesidium of the Synod to a
Referral Panel consisting of three of the district’s circuit
visitors.
Virtually every following convention after 2004 made
minor adjustments to the process, including the
makeup of panels. Most recently, the 2016 convention
authorized (2016 Res. 12-14) the insertion into the
bylaws of the right of an appeal to the President of the
Synod in the event a district president failed to initiate
formal proceedings, when a member of the Synod has
been accused in a matter of doctrine and practice. This
is similar to the arrangement made in 1864, and
continued in various forms until 2004, although it is
now spelled out in much greater detail.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2019 (67TH) LCMS CONVENTION | 113