LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 462

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462 OTHER PERTINENT DOCUMENTS

Dissenting Opinion on Women
in Congregational Offices

A. Introduction

When the document The Service of Women in Congregational
and Synodical Offices was adopted by the CTCR at its November
1994 meeting, the undersigned indicated their intention to submit a
minority report. According to the Commission’s informal but de-
tailed guidelines for adopting documents, a minority report must
be considered by the whole commission and, if adopted, published
along with the document itself. Since the majority who voted for
the document decided to publish it in the Reporter before consid-
ering our response, we regretfully conclude that the spirit of the
guidelines has already been broken and we release this Minority
Report for consideration by the church.

We understand that questions concerning our life together in the
church, especially those on “women in the church,” are quite sen-
sitive. One reason for this is that the traditional and historic under-
standing of these issues is not “in tune” with the understandings of
broader, popular culture. This places us into an unfamiliar context
which demands serious theological reflection. Especially now, pa-
tient, earnest thought, rooted in respect for God’s own truth, is crit-
ical. The alternative is haste. The minority is firmly of the opinion
that the Commission has acted in undue haste.

Our concerns are threefold: procedural, historical, and theolog-
ical.

B. Procedural Concerns

The passage of the CTCR Service of Women document occurred
only after a remarkable overriding of the Commission’s own nor-
mal processes. Although the committee under whose auspices the
Report was being prepared (Committee 2) had discussed its con-
tents approximately half way (through the section on Elders and
beginning the discussion on Chairman and Vice-Chairman), it was
determined to hold a consultation on the draft with COP members,
at the request of the COP.'

The consultation with the COP took place in late September,
yet a new updated draft of the Report was not available to CTCR
members, including Committee 2 members, until several days prior
to the November meeting.” At that meeting, in his regular presen-
tation to the CTCR, the President of Synod, A. L. Barry, strongly
urged the Commission not to act in haste in adopting the new Re-
port. He noted that the one year Synod deadline preceding the July
1995 convention for the presentation of a Commission Report had
already passed and that haste would not serve the church. Far from
honoring this reasonable request, however—a request which should
have been honored if only to conform to the CTCR’s own self-un-
derstanding as formally adopted in its Mission Statement (that it
“assists the President of Synod at his request”)*—the Executive
Committee of the CTCR, apart from any discussion with Commit-
tee 2 and without any vote by that committee to bring the docu-
ment to plenary, proceeded to take the document from committee
and present it to the plenary. Furthermore, the Executive Commit-
tee set aside its Tentative Schedule (agenda) sent to members 7-10
days before the November CTCR meeting, cancelled virtually all
normally scheduled individual committee sessions, and scheduled
in their place plenary after plenary (including an extra evening ses-
sion) to work relentlessly on the document as a “committee of the
whole.” Other than a very brief discussion in its April 1994 meet-
ing, this was the only discussion of the Report by plenary. The Re-
port was adopted by a vote of 7-4, four voting members (25%) not
being present. That is, with only seven members voting for the doc-
ument, the “majority” Report was adopted by less than a majority
of the entire sixteen (voting) member Commission.

2004 Convention Workbook

C. Historical Concerns

1. The Report’s Appendix provides a brief overview of the his-
tory of “women in the church” discussions, beginning with the
Synod’s 1969 Resolution 2-17. This summary is important, for here
the CTCR offers its interpretation of what the Synod and the CTCR
itself have said in the past 25 years. This discussion, furthermore,
intends to validate the position of the new Report. But at strategic
points, the Appendix is, unfortunately, misleading, if not wrong.

The Appendix says, “Regarding offices and board membership
the Synod [said in 1969 Res. 2-17]... that women are prohibited
from holding any other kind of office or membership on boards or
committees in the institutional structures of a congregation, only if
such a way of proceeding involves women in a violation of this
principle” (emphasis added). “This principle,” in the context of the
Appendix, is that women ought not be pastors or carry out distinc-
tive functions of the pastoral office. But that is not what the
Synod’s resolution actually said. In addition to making the point
concerning the pastoral office, Res. 2-17 also said that the service
of women on boards, etc., should not violate “the order of cre-
ation.” This is an important inaccuracy in the account, for charac-
teristic of the Report is its refusal to include the order of creation as
a guiding concept in its argument. Indeed, Res. 2-17 explicitly op-
erates with two guiding principles: that concerning the pastoral of-
fice, and that concerning the order of creation. The Appendix’s ren-
dering consistently refuses to acknowledge this second principle.
Thus, the Appendix says that Res. 2-17 allowed freedom for con-
gregations to alter policies and practices “provided the polity de-
veloped conforms to the Scriptural principles informing the
Synod’s position regarding the pastoral office.” However, what the
1969 Resolution actually said was that congregations could make
changes “provided the polity developed conforms to the general
scriptural principles that women neither hold the pastoral office nor
exercise authority over men’ (emphasis added).

Again, in 1969 Res. 2-17 the Synod acknowledged (as it always
had) a principle of the order of creation which defines the relations
between men and women in the church, as well as specific appli-
cation of this principle in allowing only men to serve in the pas-
toral office. That this is the correct reading of Res. 2-17 is clear
from the 1970 ruling of the Commission on Constitutional Matters
(CCM) to which the Appendix refers.‘ In its sample constitutional
paragraph, the CCM allows the service of women as officers and
members of board and committees “as long as these positions are
not directly involved in the specific functions of the pastoral office
... and as long as this service does not violate the order of creation
(usurping authority over men)” (emphasis added). This position of
the Synod was (as the Appendix notes) subsequently reaffirmed by
Synod in convention in 1981 and in 1986.5 What is not clearly ad-
mitted in the Appendix is that the present Report challenges the re-
peated and historic position of the Synod regarding the service of
women in congregational offices such as chairman, vice-chairman
and committee chairs. In the Appendix and in open discussion, the
members of the majority and the staff made much of the CCM
statement that “the Synod may further define its position in the fu-
ture.” To be sure, it may, and in the Report the majority clearly de-
sires a redefinition. But has the groundwork been laid to sustain
such a change?

2. The present Report is in response to 1989 Resolution 3-13A,
which asked the CTCR to prepare a study concerning the service of
women in congregational and synodical offices. The specific ques-
tion posed by that resolution was whether women may serve “in
all offices of the congregation, including that of chairman, vice-
chairman and elder, and district and synodical boards and commis-
sions where their official function would, in effect, involve public
accountability for the function(ing) of the pastoral office” (empha-
sis added).° In its first resolve, Res. 3-13A assumes that the offices
in question “would in effect involve public accountability for the