Ad Crucem NewsLCMS 2026

Ad Crucem NewsLCMS 2026 ConventionCompare

From 2023 reports to 2026 reports

The 2023 Convention Workbook carried 97 reports across 97 officers, boards, commissions, districts, and CTCR theological documents. The 2026 Workbook carries 96. This page shows how the two corpora map to one another — which reports persist, which were re-authored, which were dropped, and which are new.

Of 89 matched report pairs, 17 show substantial verbatim cut-and-paste from 2023 (≥10% of the 2023 report’s 12-word phrases reappear word-for-word in 2026); 16 show light revision (2–10% retained); and 56 were effectively re-authored.

Methodology: each pair’s overlap is measured by the share of 12-word shingles in the 2023 body that reappear verbatim in the 2026 body. Twelve-word windows are long enough to ignore incidental sentence overlaps but short enough to catch paragraph-level boilerplate reuse.

From 2023 reports to 2026 reportsA two-column flow diagram. The left column shows the 97 reports filed for the 2023 LCMS Convention, grouped by category. The right column shows the 96 reports filed for the 2026 Convention, grouped by the same categories. Curved flow lines between the columns trace each report’s fate: carried forward verbatim, lightly revised, re-authored, or renumbered. Dropped 2023 reports terminate at the left edge; reports new in 2026 originate at the right edge.2023 Reports97 total2026 Reports96 totalOfficersBoard of DirectorsMission BoardsCommissionsPastoral FormationUniversity SystemCorporate entitiesDistrictsAuxiliariesTask forcesEcclesiastical visitationCCM opinionsCTCR documentsOfficersBoard of DirectorsMission BoardsCommissionsPastoral FormationUniversity SystemCorporate entitiesDistrictsAuxiliariesTask forcesEcclesiastical visitationCCM opinionsCTCR documents
Carried forward (≥10% verbatim)Light revision (2–10%)Re-authored (<2%)Renumbered + carriedDropped / new
89 matched 2023↔2026 report pairs; 8 2023 reports without a 2026 successor; 9 reports new in 2026. Flow color encodes verbatim 12-gram overlap between the two report bodies — see legend.

Most carried forward

Reports where the largest share of the 2023 text reappears word-for-word in 2026. Typically these are reports with stable mission statements, board structures, or institutional summaries that the same body produces every triennium.

  • R735.1%

    Board for International Mission

  • R5628.2%

    International Lutheran Laymen’s League (Lutheran Hour Ministries)

  • R13.124.7%

    Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri

  • R324.5%

    Praesidium

  • R1322.4%

    Pastoral Formation Committee Gnosticism

  • R4519.6%

    Oklahoma District

  • R1.217.7%

    Chief Mission Officer

  • R3716.9%

    Nebraska District

  • R416.7%

    Secretary

  • R1816.6%

    LCMS Foundation

  • R2015.3%

    Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty

  • R14.414.7%

    Concordia University, St. Paul

Dropped from 2023

Reports filed for 2023 that have no successor in 2026. Some were superseded by reorganization (CTCR ecclesiastical- visitation reports), some by entity changes (Concordia Historical Institute moved out of the report stream), and three were district reports whose districts no longer file separately.

  • R1.2.2

    Office of International Mission

  • R15

    Concordia Historical Institute

  • R2

    First Vice-President

  • R33

    Minnesota North District

  • R40

    North Dakota District

  • R54

    Texas District

  • R63

    Ecclesiastical Visitation of Concordia University Wisconsin

  • R64

    Ecclesiastical Visitation of Concordia University Texas

New in 2026

Reports that appear in the 2026 Workbook with no 2023 predecessor. The biggest cluster is the Pastoral Formation Committee’s expansion (R13.3–R13.6) on the SMP / residential-formation question.

  • R13.3

    Report R13.3

  • R13.4

    Report R13.4: Report on Approaches to and Outcomes of Residential and Non-Residential

  • R13.5

    POLICY REQUIREMENTS FOR THE SPECIFIC MINISTRY PASTOR PROGRAM:

  • R13.6

    Report R13.6

  • R2.2

    Colloquy Committee for Commissioned Ministry (CCCM)

  • R39

    New Jersey District Ministry Situation and Challenges

  • R47

    Rocky Mountain District

  • R48

    SELC District

  • R5.1.3

    Operations Support Services

Corpus-level numbers

  • 270,515 words in the 2023 reports corpus
  • 333,161 words in the 2026 reports corpus
  • 6,529 distinct 12-word phrases shared verbatim between the two
  • ~78,348 words of overlap (≈ 29.0% of the 2023 corpus)