The May 2026 AALC YouTube broadcast in which Rev. Dr. Cary Larson and Rev. Dr. Jordan Cooper answer Ov. 5-09 persistently argues that the basis of fellowship between the Synods is doctrine alone, with practice an adiaphoronin which each body’s polity is to be respected. The doctrine and practice framing the 2026 LCMS Convention Workbook now uses, Cooper says, is historically the framing of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod rather than of the LCMS, and is contradicted by the express language of the 2007 protocol and the 2009 operating agreement.
That argument was set out at length in our earlier coverage of the broadcast, AALC Responds to Threat of Termination of Altar and Pulpit Fellowship with LCMS. However, the 2007 Lutheran Witness report on the convention vote that received the AALC into LCMS fellowship quotes the then-presiding pastor of the AALC saying it is altar and pulpit fellowship by doctrine and practice.
The 2007 Record
On July 16, 2007, the LCMS in convention adopted Resolution 3-01, declaring altar and pulpit fellowship with The American Association of Lutheran Churches. The AALC, having taken parallel action a month earlier, became the thirtieth Lutheran body in altar and pulpit fellowship with the LCMS and the first North American body to be so received in a long time. The Lutheran Witness’s report records two things worth quoting directly. First, the words of Rev. Thomas Aadland, the AALC’s presiding pastor at the time, addressing the LCMS convention floor:
By the action you have just taken, and by that taken by the AALC in convention last month, we have just declared fellowship with one another in those sacred gifts given by our Lord Himself to us, which He bestows upon us through His holy Word and Sacrament. This is truly an awesome thing, that the unity we have in Christ has now been so expressed because of mutually recognized concord in faith and life.
Second, the Witness’s own editorial line:
The declaration of altar and pulpit fellowship recognizes agreement in doctrine and practice between the LCMS and the AALC.
Both statements are, by 2026 standards, very problematic for the AALC’s now-very-public position.
Concord in Faith and Life
Per Aadland’s formulation, faith and lifeare the theological pair the Lutheran tradition uses to render the doctrine-and-practice distinction without using those exact terms. Faith is what the Church confesses; life is how the Church embodies what it confesses. The pair runs through multiple streams of Lutheran doctrine and fellowship agreements, including the LCMS-WELS doctrinal exchanges of the mid-twentieth century. Consequently, when Aadland told the 2007 convention that the unity in Christ had been expressed because of “mutually recognized concord in faith and life,” he was not setting practice aside as an adiaphoron. He was saying, on behalf of his church body, that at the moment fellowship was declared, the AALC and the LCMS had reached an agreement on both.
Aadland’s choice of concord is itself instructive. The word is the title of our agreed Confession, which is itself an agreement on both faith (the Confessions) and life (how we exercise our agreed Confessions).
What the Record Hands the Convention
Consequently, Floor Committee 5 will receive Ov. 5-09 with both the AALC’s 2026 video reply and the 2007 Lutheran Witness report on the public record. The two cannot both be the AALC’s position unless it is now repudiating Aadland’s 2007 statement. Unfortunately, the AALC has activated the Streisand Effect, which almost obliges the overture to reach the convention floor rather than die in committee because the AALC has moved its goalposts so publicly and aggressively, causing a material fracture in the agreement.