Proposal #18

Warning: LCMS politics are found herein.

I'm a delegate to this summer's 2010 LCMS convention.  As such, I have been given the duty to review the proposals of Synod President Kieschnick's Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synod Structure and Governance (BRTFSSG).  There are a total of 21 proposals of varying length and depth of suggested change.  Buried toward the end of the proposals is the one that I've come to refer to as the bread and butter of the BRTFSSG, proposal #18.  This particular proposal is what will be the real change in structure and governance, and, in my opinion, the reason why this task force was first appointed.

From the Summary of BRTFSSG Recommendations:

Recommendation #18: Realign the National Synod Ministries around Two Mission Commissions

The national Synod shall be realigned around two mission commissions:

• Commission on International Mission
• Commission on National Mission

Under this realignment, several areas of responsibility that currently are managed from the national office shall be transferred to the Synod’s districts and/or other entities.

In short, this recommendation is to undo the entire structure of elected and appointed boards of the synod and in its place establish two commissions.  These commissions would be placed in charge of all international activities of the synod in the former commission and all domestic activities for the latter commission.  These two commissions would be headed by an executive director who would report to an individual above them, the Chief Mission Officer (CMO) who would report to the synod president.  Additionally the CMO would be appointed by the synod president.

While the proposal gives much lip service to preserving the congregational principle, i.e. encouraging congregations to be the driving force behind the mission activities of our synod, it is clear to anyone who reads this proposal that it is designed to do precisely the opposite.  Instead of giving the congregations the freedom and authority to be the driving force of the missions of the LCMS, it creates a centralized, top-down governance that will function fairly independently from the congregations of the synod for three to four years.  The congregations' only job, then, is to hire or fire the synod president every convention cycle.

Why should this proposal not be adopted?

There are many reasons why this proposal should not be adopted, and many of those reasons have been written about by others.  But I'll offer a reason that I don't think I've heard before.

This article, found in the synod-run newspaper, The Reporter, makes the case that the next generation has little love for institutional forms.  In fact, the article says,

Cook said that many emerging Christians have "a lot of apathy for institution and hierarchy" and regard institutional forms of the church to be ineffective and unworkable.

The irony is that, while the institution of the national synod is telling congregations that they need to become less institutional and hierarchical (read: pastor-led ministry) for the sake of reaching the lost, the national synod is planning to make itself an even more rigid institution and also to install a hierarchy that has never been found before in the LCMS. 

The national synod and proposal #18 have it exactly backwards.  The national synod needs to become less centralized and return the task of the mission to the congregations--both international and domestic.  If proposal #18 passes, I can almost guarantee that it will be obsolete in 10 years, as the current generation passes away to a new generation.

Instead, the national synod should be what it was intended to be: an advisory body.  Pay for our seminaries and our church work college students, publish books, and show the congregations where missions need to be done.

Then let the congregations and individual Christians get together to get things done.  For an example, see the Haiti Mission Project.  My sister and some friends got together and decided that they wanted to do some good for orphans in Haiti.  They formed a not-for-profit organization and have done a variety of things for the people and churches of Haiti.  And they didn't have to funnel resources through a national office. 

I believe that this example is the way that missions will be done in the coming years, not by feeding and growing the bureaucracy.