LCMS Commission on Constitutional Matters — Minutes St. Louis, Missouri — April 2, 1994, Page 4

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someone regarding a request such as a request for the publication of names and addresses of lay
delegates to a district convention. There does not appear to be any group other than the Board of
Directors who may be considered to be representative of the entire district and thus be in a
position to decide matters of this kind between conventions.
1.

The proper forum for resolving a dispute of this nature can only be the district convention
since there are at present no district bylaws or resolutions which govern the matter of release of
the names and addresses of lay delegates.

The Commission further noted two points which speak to this issue.
1.

Bylaw 4.23 speaks of Accrediting of Delegates as follows:
The delegates of a voting congregation shall stand accredited and entitled to vote upon presenting to
the Secretary at the opening of the convention the proper credentials provided by the District
Secretary and signed by two of the congregation's officers. [Emphasis added.]
In others words, a delegate may be duly elected by a congregation but is not accredited as a voting
delegate until the time and circumstances noted. Prior to that, one who is duly elected by a
congregation is a potential voting delegate. This is in contrast to the certifying of Synodical
Convention delegates which takes place as follows (Bylaw 3.11):
The names and addresses of all voting and advisory delegates and representatives and their
alternates shall be forwarded by the District Secretary before the announced registration deadline
to the Secretary of the Synod on registration forms provided by the latter. This procedure shall
constitute certification.
In others words, these delegates are certified long before the Synodical Convention begins,
making it possible to provide, according to Bylaw 3.10,d,
A convention manual containing reports, overtures, names and mailing addresses of all voting
delegates, and other information [which] shall be published under the editorship of the Secretary
subject to the approval of the President.

1.

The Commission is of the opinion that communications regarding constitutional functions of a
congregation should properly be with the congregation which is the member, not the agent of the
congregation in order to provide assurance that misunderstanding of the communication does not
exist. The Commission wishes to have it clearly understood that in stating this opinion it is speaking
to an abstract situation without respect to who the agent might be.

78. Congregational Autonomy (Ag. 1980) : A Dispute Resolution Panel which was considering a case in
which a congregation had claimed congregational autonomy in dismissing its pastor forwarded the
following questions for an opinion by the Commission on Constitutional Matters:
1.
1.

1.

How does The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod interpret congregational autonomy?
What is to be the relation between the congregation in the utilization of autonomy and the pastor in
the exercise of the pastoral office?
What constitutes the inability of a pastor to perform the functions of the pastoral office?