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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 191

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

I. OPINIONS OF COMMISSION ON CONSTITUTIONAL MATTERS
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.
••

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.

••

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.

••

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

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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 including expulsion of a member under his
supervision, whether individual or a congregation.”
It deals extensively with the ecclesiastical supervision
and, if necessary, discipline of congregations, but
does not address the relative roles of the Synod and
district presidents in that ecclesiastical supervision.

7. CCM Op. 13-2669: Ecclesiastical Supervision
and 15-2750: President’s Ecclesiastical Supervisory
Duties and Individual Members of the Synod
CCM Op. 13-2669 concerned (among other things, which
the commission does not here address) whether Article XI
granted to the President of the Synod “authority to supervise
the doctrine or administration of individual or congregation
members of the Synod not listed in Article XI, [or whether that
is] the responsibility of a district president under Article XII 7.”
The opinion, produced nine years after the process for appeal
for action to the Praesidium was replaced with appeal to referral panels and twenty-four years after the process for appeal for
action to the President, with its constitutional rationale, was
replaced with appeal to the Praesidium (though not for constitutional reasons), did not take up 1956 Res. 6-11 or the prior
bylaw procedure, allowing appeal for action to the President, at
all. Of course, given that no such bylaws for a limited appeal for
action to the President of the Synod existed in 2013, this may
have seemed a moot point. Likewise, what it means, in Const.
Art. XI B 1 c, for the President of the Synod to have supervision of the districts (which, like the Synod, have no relevant existence except as unions [Constitution Preface: “Reason for the
Forming of a Synodical Union”] of their constituent congregations and individual members17)—in addition to supervision, in
Const. Art. XI B 1 c, of the district presidents, specifically—was
not addressed.
Bylaw 3.3.1.1.1 [b] was examined, that “in the districts of
the Synod, [the President of the Synod] shall carry out his ecclesiastical duties through the district’s president,” but that these
duties are, first of all, his, also received no attention. The present commission is not persuaded by those arguments of Op. 132669 that might be applied counter to those of Op. 16-2791 (all
of which have been dealt with already).
Op. 13-2669 simply did not deal with all approaches to the
constitutional question, and to the extent that it has been superseded by Op. 16-2791, it stands superseded. Op. 16-2791 and
Res. 12-14 deal with an exceptional case where the front line
of ecclesiastical supervision, exercised by the district presidents
on behalf of the one Synod, applying one standard, is alleged
to have demonstrably failed. The commission finds no conflict
between the ordinary assignment of ecclesiastical supervision
“especially” to district presidents and the exceptional exercise
of ecclesiastical supervision by the President of the Synod in
cases where the exercise of that supervision by the district officials has broken down and the unity of doctrine and practice
in the whole Synod is, therefore, jeopardized. In that exceptional
case he is to operate by the same standard and is subject to the
same procedures as the district president. In such a case, by virtue of the power given him in Const. XI B 1–3, he is to have
this means (namely, the ability to initiate expulsion procedures,
2019 Convention Workbook