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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2026, Page 148

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

148

2026 Convention Workbook

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Throughout the period of Figure 1, in comparison to the circumstances of 1969, when the present system was
put into use, the Synod has had, on average, fewer and increasingly fewer confirmed members in an
“average” electoral circuit than in 1969; it has also had fewer congregations per electoral circuit, although
this ratio is increasing. In 1969, there were 11.5 member congregations and 3,928 confirmed members, on
average, per electoral circuit; in 1998, there were 10 and 3,247; in 2023, 10.9 and 2,622. 5

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2. Characterization of Current Visitation and Electoral Circuits

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The Office of the President approved 532 electoral circuits for representation at the 2023 convention. Of
these, 413 were visitation circuits that satisfied the minimum requirements in their own right, 59 were pairs
of adjacent visitation circuits (7 of which had more than 20 congregations), and 3 were triples of adjacent
visitation circuits (2 of which had more than 20 congregations). 57 (11%) were under requirements and
received exceptions: 7, having fewer than 7 congregations; 49, having fewer than 1,500 members (10 of which
were pairs of adjacent visitation circuits); and 1, having both fewer than 7 congregations and fewer than
1,500 members. Of the 57 “underage” exceptions, as noted above, 17 were granted to geographical districts
in the WSW region and 16 in the ESE region.

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Comparing lines to bars in Figure 1, the voting size of the convention 6 has only recently begun to trend
moderately downward in response to slight decline in the number of member congregations (5,775 in 2023
vs. 6,033 in 2004) and significant decline in confirmed membership (1.39M in 2023 vs. 1.95M in 1998). There
were 532 electoral circuits in 2023 compared to a 2004 high of 628, a decline of 15% in a period that saw a
27% decline in confirmed membership and a 5% decline in the number of member congregations.
There is a stable, regional non-uniformity. Figure 2 shows, for each region, 7 in 2010 and 2023, the proportion
of confirmed members and congregations, plus the number of exceptions, all of which contribute to the
number of electoral circuits, and the number of non-SMP parish pastors. 8 Exceptions tend to be granted
disproportionately in the ESE and WSW regions, as well as, to a lesser extent, the non-geographical districts,
offsetting a relatively lower number of confirmed members in those regions and a commensurate challenge
forming compliant electoral circuits—a long-term pattern, as the comparative data from 2010 indicate. 9

Figure 3: Distribution, Confirmed Membership of 2023 Electoral Circuits (SY2021 data; thresholds at 1,500, 1,630, and
1,792; see text)
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Figure 2: Proportion of Electoral and Visitation Circuits, Congregations, Confirmed Members, Non-SMP Pastors, and
Exceptions per Region, 2010 and 2023

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Such averages are useful for general comparison over time of representation rates but obscure wide variance among actual circuits.

In 2023, the 532 electoral circuits were ultimately represented by 521 pastoral and 502 lay voting delegates plus 453 advisory and
other registered attendees, for a total of 1,476, at the lower end of a range that has varied between 1,459 and 1,633 since 1989. In that
period, the number of voting delegates (representing circuits) grew gradually from 1,139 in 1989 to 1,241 in 2004 and has declined
since, the number of advisory and other registrants increasing significantly from 363 in 1989.

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While the designated regions have no formal connection to circuit alignment or convention representation, they do provide familiar
and reasonable “clusters” for analytical purposes. For the purposes of this study, the congregations of nongeographical districts
(English and SELC) are removed from their usual regions and treated separately as one non-geographic region (“(NG)”).

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Figure 3 shows, on a logarithmic axis, boxplot 10 histograms indicating the distribution of the confirmed
member sizes of the circuits in each district (the width of each box reflecting the number of circuits in each
district). Data are from SY2021, used to apportion circuits for the 2023 convention. The dark red line indicates
the lower bound of 1,500 confirmed members; the other two red lines are at 1,630 members and 1,792
members, the confirmed member sizes (all other things being equal) a circuit would need to have in 2023 to
meet the requirement of 1,500 members, after a typical 8% triennial decline, in 2026 and, after an additional
9% triennial decline, in 2029, respectively. The darker red dots represent electoral circuits that received
exceptions in 2023; the lighter red dots, those that may require exceptions or realignment or combination of
adjacent visitation circuits, all other things being equal, for 2026 (52 circuits) and 2029 (49 circuits). With
these threshold lines moving well into the “box” of the two center quartiles (and even to or beyond the
median for districts like EN, SELC, MDS, OK, NE, SE, SO, WY, CNH and NOW), and with the total number of
exceptions required to maintain the present apportionment of circuits nearly doubling and tripling the

membership. It is important to note that electoral circuit metrics explicitly take into account confirmed membership. Higher
historical rates of confirmed membership decline in the ESE and WSW regions may have contributed to these regions’ heightened
exception rate; geographical challenges and lower concentrations of LCMS presence may also play a role.

According to Bylaw 3.12.1, regions “shall take into consideration geographical and number of congregations information in the
interest of fair representation.” They have, in addition, been formed in an attempt not to exacerbate imbalance of confirmed

A boxplot represents a “distribution curve” (ideally, the familiar “bell curve”) coming up out of the page. The colored box represents
the middle quartiles (half the data points) with the divider at the median. The “whiskers” protruding from the box represent the
outer quartiles, but to a distance no more than 1.5 times the interquartile distance. Outliers beyond the whiskers are marked as black
dots.

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These are eligible to serve as pastoral delegates to the Synod convention.

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OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS

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The heights of solid bars in Figure 1 (excluding the slashed portion at the top, which reflects visitation circuits
“combined away” into others to reach electoral circuit requirements) represent the number of electoral
circuits formed for each convention, the green (lower) bar, those meeting the requirements and the red,
yellow, and orange bars representing exceptions granted by the Office of the President to those that did not.