LCMS Commission on Constitutional Matters — Minutes St. Louis, Missouri — June 13–14, 2014, Page 9

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

worship services. The two congregations help to support the calling congregation in return for services
provided.
The district president added that each of the congregations in the partnership believes that it is entitled to
a lay delegate to the district convention, since the congregations see themselves as unique entities with
their own voters assemblies, officers, etc. and since two of the congregations only “contract for pastoral
services,” with the congregation that called the pastor. This congregation alone would be entitled to send
a pastor delegate to the convention.
The district president requested a response to the following:
Question: Do I as district president treat this situation as a multi-congregation parish entitled to one lay
voting delegate and one pastor voting delegate at our district convention, or do I treat this
situation as three separate congregations with each entitled to one lay voting delegate and with
the calling congregation alone sending a pastoral voting delegate to the convention?
Response: The Commission on Constitutional Matters has already provided an extensive response to
questions regarding multiple-congregation delegate representation at district conventions (Opinion 112618, provided in its entirety below). Although the size and number of congregations involved may differ,
the previous opinion’s response to the following question also addresses the above question:
3. A large congregation which does not need the financial support of any other congregation, allows their pastor
to provide pulpit supply on Sunday afternoons for a small congregation which cannot afford a full-time pastor.
There are no other pastors available in the area.
Opinion: The question speaks of “pulpit supply.” It also speaks of “a small congregation which cannot afford a
full-time pastor.” Regardless of financial considerations, if the pastor is regarded by the small congregation as
its pastor and speaks of him as its pastor, and if he provides Word and Sacrament ministry, ministers to the sick
and dying, etc., this and the larger congregation are a dual parish being served by one pastor and, therefore, a
parish to be represented at district conventions by the pastor and one lay delegate. Such lay representation will
be shared in a manner that presumably is fair and equitable for both congregations.

A summary response that addresses all district convention delegate representation questions is provided
earlier in Opinion 11-2618: “[T]he principle stands without exception: Two or more congregations being
served by the same pastor constitute a parish with the right of representation by one lay delegate and one
pastoral delegate.”
________________
83. Congregation Representation at District Conventions (11-2618)
In a letter dated October 14, 2011, a district president inquired regarding exceptions to the standard definition of a “parish”
as “two or more congregations served by the same pastor” when representation to the district convention is being
determined. In his letter he called attention to an August 30, 1990 opinion of the commission (Ag. 1898 “Pastoral Voting
Eligibility”) in which a seminary professor was not granted voting privilege on behalf of a nearby congregation although he
was serving the congregation on a regular basis. The district president wrote: “Since the CCM declared that a called pastor
in one ministry (the seminary) could do Word and Sacrament ministry in a congregation (Trinity, Worden, Illinois) without
a call to that congregation and declared the pastor was ‘not in the technical sense the pastor of Trinity, Worden, Illinois,’
could the CCM perceive additional situations where a congregation could enter into such an agreement?”
He then offered a series of “situations that might call for additional exceptions” to the definition of a parish and asked, “Can
an exception be granted for any of the above or others that you perceive?” and, “Could the current interpretation force large
congregations to forbid their pastors from serving small congregations which cannot afford a full-time pastor because they
do not want to be recognized by the Synod as being a dual parish?”
The commission notes that the second question in the foregoing paragraph calls for speculation that is beyond the
responsibility of the Commission on Constitutional Matters, which is to “interpret the Synod’s Constitution, Bylaws, and

CCM Minutes – June 13–14, 2014 – Page 24