LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 20

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20 SYNOD REPORTS

Preparing/Caring Church Workers to serve God’s people in Word,
service and sacramental ministry

Congregational services strengthening our congregations in coop-
eration with our districts

World Relief ministries vigorously making known the love of
Christ by word and deed

As recently as 1990 the trend toward “direct (restricted)” giving
was growing so rapidly that Synod leaders predicted it would not
be long before funding the work of Synod would cross the 50/50
line in terms of restricted and unrestricted giving. How prophetic
those leaders were. And it happened faster than even they could
have predicted. Today at the Synod level the national budget is sup-
ported 75% by restricted dollars and 25% by unrestricted support.
This trend presents many challenges not the least of which are:

* The difficulty of planning synodical work each year based on the
success of restricted development efforts. (Will the direct gifts
given this year be there next year also?)

¢ The communication challenge that is necessary to ensure wise
“distribution of funds” decisions at local and district levels. (How
are individuals and congregations deciding which ministries to
support directly? Do they have good information upon which to
make those decisions?)

¢ The difficulty in funding the national bylaw and convention man-
dated administration and ecclesiastical supervision with steadily
diminishing amounts of unrestricted dollars. (How will we fund
the necessary work we need to do together that is not attractive
in direct giving decisions?)

The following recommendations are presented with a celebra-
tion for all the direct restricted giving that the Lord is using to ac-
complish His purpose among us and with our enthusiastic desire to
continue to commend direct mission support as a great blessing to
the church. And yet we believe there are still some very essential
“common-good” ministries that are the responsibility of all mem-
bers of the Synod and are not attractive for direct funding gifts. We
therefore present in these recommendations a funding model that
celebrates the freedom of ‘“‘direct giving” while at the same time
acknowledges our responsibility to ONE ANOTHER to do our part
in supporting all the work of the “common good.”

What happened to the “Unified Budget”?

In the ’60s and ’70s many factors collided with one another that
impacted the way individuals, congregations and districts made de-
cisions about the distribution of “at-large” giving (the mission
funds that traditionally had supported the national Synod’s “‘com-
mon-good” activities. Various societal changes were impacting
people’s view of “institutions” negatively. Our own theological de-
bates in the ’60s and ’70s impacted the denominational loyalty that
had blessed us for the previous generations. At the same time in
the mid-’70s, the country faced 10-20% cost-of-living increases.
The first energy crisis caused congregations to face unusually large
utility costs and the need to upgrade pastor and teacher salaries due
to escalating cost-of-living issues for our workers. Those same
years brought on the start of “run away” health insurance costs that
have continued to this day. All of these factors (and more) caused
congregations to keep more of the Sunday morning offerings for
“Jocal” missions and so “at large” giving didn’t keep pace with cost-
of-living issues.

In response to the need to support worldwide missions, by 1980
Synod embarked on a $70 million special campaign called “For-
ward in Remembrance.” Begun in 1959, The LCMS Foundation
expanded its development staff rapidly on behalf of “Forward in
Remembrance” and a second effort called “Alive in Christ” with
professional consultants who met with members of our congrega-
tions soliciting major direct gifts to support world missions, our
Concordias and works of human care. Happening in the same
10-15 years was the expansion of several of our Concordias from

2007 Convention Workbook

2-year junior colleges to 4-year liberal arts universities. To support
the expansion of these programs (faculty and facilities) each of our
schools of higher education engaged development personnel to
meet with members of our congregations who might give direct
support to their expansion programs. Add to all of this the growth
in these same years of various television “ministries” that appealed
to members of our congregations for direct support of these non-
Lutheran Christian ministries and you begin to understand that the
mostly “unified budget” approach to synodical common-good ac-
tivity support was now lost to a mostly designated-giving model.

Which came first? The chicken or the egg?

Many discussions have wasted a lot of time in debating if our
church’s present funding challenge has come as a result of Synod
itself making all of these direct appeals to the people of the con-
gregations. This has redirected potential funding away from the
congregations and districts that otherwise could have been shared
with the Synod to fund common-good activities. While the national
office has demonstrated a decline in the percentage of support from
district budgets over the last 20 years, the districts are quick to
point out the millions of dollars from their district members that
have gone directly to world mission support, the appeals of our
seminaries and Concordia University System, Foundation devel-
opment, and the appeals of LCMS World Relief and Lutheran Dis-
aster Response. Some in Synod who react to the ‘“Concordias”
desire for greater support from the Synod’s budget are saying it’s
because the “Concordias” have gone directly to the members of the
congregations to support their expansion that there is less potential
for congregations to support the synodical budget that has in turn
had to reduce Concordia subsidies. What a vicious cycle!!! So
which came first? This report WILL NOT ascribe “blame” for the
present challenge but rather rejoice in the opportunity to present a
set of recommendations to the church that embraces present reality
and seeks to move forward in FUNDING THE MISSION. What

we have among us is a DISTRIBUTION challenge.

(B) SOME ASSUMPTIONS
What is the Mission?

Our Synod’s mission statement says that “in grateful response
to God’s grace and empowered by the Holy Spirit through Word
and Sacraments, the mission of the LCMS is vigorously to make
known the love of Christ by word and deed within our churches,
communities and the world.” This task force wishes to build our
recommendations around what we believe this great church body
desires, that is: To make known the love of Christ to all Gost and
saved) while it is day, before the night comes. We build this report
around the other resolutions of the 2004 synodical convention that
embraced the goal of the Ablaze! movement to reach 100,000,000
souls by the year 2017. This report believes that form follows func-
tion and money follows mission. We want the function of this re-
port to reflect the mission statement of this church. One of the
biggest roadblocks to “funding the mission” is the lack of owner-
ship by the people in the pews for the horrible tragedy of millions
of people headed for an eternity in hell.

St. Louis, ““We’ve Got a Problem”

The above words are a paraphrase of a famous quote from as-
tronaut James Lovell on Apollo 13 when he simply radioed com-
mand central and said “Houston, we’ve got a problem here.” Over
and over as our task force met, we were confronted with a signifi-
cant roadblock put up in front very “Funding The Missi
Model” we discussed. We were confronted with the division in our
Synod and the resultant mistrust that seems to permeate and im-
pact every level of funding decisions. Individuals, congregations
and districts are making funding decisions partially depending upon
“who is in control” at district and Synod levels of authority. Our