With the release of the names of the top nominated candidates for Synod president, the Missouri-Synod’s favorite pastime has officially reached its playoff season. Judging from the uptick in the blogosphere action, the heated political battle for Synod president will likely garner most of the attention in the days leading up to the July convention. I have always found the great concern about who is elected Synodical president to be a bit misplaced. Ultimately, with the strong congregational emphasis of the LCMS, the only real Synod-changing power the president has is the ability to remove District Presidents for theological boundary violations. While this may change the openness of Missouri’s theological climate, for better or worse depending on your perspective, life in the individual parish will go on exactly as it has for most parishes and pastors regardless of who is elected come July.

It is always the other actions of the convention that have a greater ability to make substantial changes in the life of synod and its parishes, and there have been some big ones over the years. The adoption of A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles (1973), the rejection of Lutheran Book of Worship (1977), the authorization of “Lay Ministers” to perform sacramental acts (1989), and a revamping of the dispute resolution process (2004) which made it more difficult to file charges against members of the LCMS, all have had a far greater impact on the life of individual congregations and synod as a whole than elections for synod president.

This year two proposals have the potential to join the list of those resolutions which have changed the face of Missouri on both the congregational and synod-wide level. The first is the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Structure, which has proposed changes to all levels of the bureaucratic structure of Synod from how often conventions are held, to representation at those conventions, and even how districts are organized. A breif summary of those proposals can be found here. In a rarity for the Missouri-Synod, perhaps because it has the potential to affect future candidate elections (it always comes back to elections in Missouri!), the Blue Ribbon Structure proposal has generated almost as much discussion as the candidates themselves.

Perhaps the most impactful action the convention takes however will be a decision regarding what to do with joint service ministries between the ELCA and the LCMS in the wake of the ELCA’s actions at its last convention assembly. There are calls within Missouri to suspend all joint work – Military Chaplaincy, Social Service Agencies, and Schools. For many in Missouri the ELCA’s sexuality decisions were the last straw. The unilateral nature of the ELCA decisions, without regard even for their ecumenical and global Lutheran partners, leaves little confidence for Missourians that the ELCA intends to do anything other than push their new agenda within these joint ministries. Will non-celibate gays be appointed to social service boards? Will they be appointed as chaplains for joint social service agencies and schools?

Such concerns, though legitimate, ring somewhat hollow given that the LCMS  has continued working with the ELCA in joint service ministry even though the ELCA has had ordained women since its inception, a position which for many in Missouri is as equally un-Biblical as the ordination of non-celibate gays. The head of LCMS World Relief, and incidentally the candidate receiving the most nominations for LCMS president, has gone as far as to call women’s ordination a “heresy.”[1] If "cooperation in externals" is already possible with a church thought to hold a “heretical position” why would the issue of sexuality become the final dividing issue? The LCMS in convention in 2001 had already declared the ELCA could no longer be considered "an orthodox Lutheran church." Is cooperation in externals  really threatened by the theology behind the ELCA’s decisions this summer, or is the issue homosexuality itself?

I am no prophet, but I can pretty much guarantee that by late July members of the LCMS will have already begun politicking for the next synodical president election in 2013, 2014 or whenever the Blue Ribbon Task Force proposed resolution says it will be. Losers will begin again the process of political dissent even as life continues unchanged in their parishes. What is less clear is whether our important work among our numerous social ministries will continue. It is my hope that the LCMS will find a way to continue its joint work while expressing its dissent at having been put in a position of having to come to terms with the unilateral decision making of a denomination that has become every bit its rival in sectarian politics.