To Appeal for Recognized Ecclesiastical Relationship with Luther Classical College

Preamble The classical Lutheran education movement in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) began in the late 1990s with a few schools and the gathering of a small number of educators in what has become the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education (CCLE, a recognized service organization [RSO]). As the classical education movement gained momentum nationally, LCMS Lutherans sought to develop a uniquely Lutheran curriculum and educational philosophy, distinct from the many Reformed, Roman Catholic, Baptist, and secular versions of the classical liberal arts. In the LCMS, Lutherans discovered that the Western Christian educational tradition had already been richly and thoroughly adapted by Lutheran leaders (e.g. Luther and Melanchthon) in the Lutheran Reformation and again in the United States of America at the beginning of the LCMS under C.F.W. Walther’s leadership. Current classical Lutheran educators have sought to build on this tradition. Today, this movement in the LCMS continues to grow rapidly among Lutheran schools and home schools. In the LCMS this movement is supported by new classical offerings in our Concordia University System (CUS) schools, by the biennial “Lutheranism and the Classics” conference hosted by Concordia Theological Seminary and by the CCLE. Recent CCLE conferences have been attended by over 500 participants. The number of CCLE accredited schools surpassed 20 schools in 2024. Numerous home schools throughout Synod have embraced the Western tradition of classical education. From the beginning, schools in the classical Lutheran education movement throughout the Synod have sought to find and recruit pastors, teachers, and headmasters who have received an education that combines a thorough knowledge of Scriptures and the Confessions of the Lutheran church with the skills and knowledge appropriate to the Western Christian liberal arts tradition. For the past quarter-century Lutheran schools and Lutheran parents have contemplated the need for a Lutheran classical college in which sound Christian doctrine, philosophy, history, literature, the classical languages, and the mathematical arts are thoroughly integrated and incorporated into the life of the home, church, and community. Classical Lutheran leaders who attempted to start such a college in the early years discovered that the time was not right. The right time has now come. In 2020, pastors, laymen, and congregations of the Wyoming District and across the LCMS organized a board of regents for the new Luther Classical College (LCC). In 2025, LCC held classes for its first cohort of students. The college has been hosted and sponsored in various ways by two district congregations in Casper, Wyo. (Mount Hope and Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Churches). Each congregation provides regents to the LCC Board of Regents (BOR), calls for roster ed church workers, and has a role in the nomination of regents. The district president is a member of the BOR; he advises the LCC president, BOR, Mount Hope, and Trinity in the appointment and election of faculty; and he provides ecclesiastical oversight, encouragement, and counsel to LCCthrough its president and BOR. As of January 2025, LCC has been sponsored and funded by hundreds of supporting LCMS congregations nationwide and more than a thousand individual LCMS donors. LCMS families are sending their young men and women to LCC to receive a robust classical Lutheran education. All the faculty and staff are members of LCMS congregations. The pastors and commissioned teachers on the faculty and staff are members of the district and are under the ecclesiastical supervision and care of the district president. LCC is a congregational college, that is, a college organized by, supported by, and supporting the congregations of the LCMS. In its doctrinal commitments and Lutheran culture, it complements the Synod’s Concordia universities, but it is not a member or part of the CUS. LCC is not governed by the LCMS and has no legal or financial connection to the Synod.From the time of its organization, however, LCC has been seeking a formal ecclesiastical relationship with Synod. Its mission fully supports and advances the divinely instituted objectives of the LCMS. LCC is bound to the Holy Scriptures as the in errant, inspired Word of God and to the Lutheran Confessions as a true exposition of Holy Scriptures and a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Lutheran church. LCC is guided by these commitments: Luther Classical College educates Lutherans in the classical, Lutheran tradition and prepares them for godly vocations within family, church, and society, fostering Christian culture through study of the best of our Western heritage. (LCC Mission Statement; luther classical.org/about/mission) The college will provide a conservative, classical Lutheran education to Lutheran students. Paramount will be the promotion of Christian culture, a stress on the priority of Christian marriage, family, and piety, and a cultivation of confessional Lutheran theology, liturgy, hymnody, and identity. With courses using the “great books” of the past for the core curriculum, the college will offer Latin, history, theology, literature, logic, rhetoric, music, geometry, biology, and mathematics, all within a purposefully Christian and Lutheran framework.

WHEREAS, Our LCC is a thoroughly Lutheran micro-college with joyful commitments to Holy Scriptures, the Lutheran Confessions, and the doctrine of the Synod; and

WHEREAS, LCC fulfills the divine commandment to teach Lutheran young people the pure doctrine of Holy Scriptures and a pious Christian life in devotion and vocation (Matt. 28:19–20; Eph. 6:1–4; Deut. 6:4–9; Psalm 78:1–8); and

WHEREAS, LCC not only conforms to the confession of the Synod (Const. Art. II)but also advances the objectives of the LCMS to “aid congregations to develop processes of thorough Christian education and nurture and to establish agencies of Christian education such as elementary and secondary schools and to support synodical colleges, universities, and seminaries” (Const. Art. III 5); and

WHEREAS, LCC is sponsored by LCMS congregations, governed by LCMS regents, located in LCMS congregations of the Wyoming District, visited diligently by the district president for the maintenance of true ecclesiastical concord (Preface to The Book of Concord, 24), and serves the congregations of the LCMS by teaching her students and returning them for life and service to the congregations of the Synod; therefore be it

Resolved, That the district in convention petition the Synod President and Secretary to work with the Commission on Constitutional Matters to write a proposed amendment to the Bylaws of Synod that creates a regular process for establishing formal ecclesiastical relations between a micro-college sponsored by LCMS congregations and the Synod; and be it further

Resolved, That the Synod President and Secretary consider proposing limitations in these bylaw amendments that include the following:

• that the micro-college be an undergraduate school restricted to a student population of 400 or less;

• that the micro-college offer instruction primarily through in- person classes;

• that the entire faculty and administration of the micro- college be members of the LCMS or members in good standing of LCMS congregations;

• that the micro-college receive regular ecclesiastical visitation with a visitation team to include, in addition to the district president of the LCMS district in which the micro- college resides, one representative each from the President of Synod, the president of the CUS, a Concordia University president or member of the theology faculty, and a seminary faculty member;

• that the doctrine and practice of the micro-college in all its faculty, teaching and preaching, worship practices, and campus culture be thoroughly Lutheran in accord with LCMS doctrinal commitments;

• that the micro-college be clearly separate from Synod legally and financially in a way similar to the requirements established for RSOs; and

• that the micro-college not prepare or posture itself to prepare pastors for ordination or laymen to carry out the functions of the pastoral office, nor certify for membership on the roster of Synod teachers and other church workers;

and be it finally

Resolved, That this resolution be sent as an overture to the 2026 Synod convention as the record of the Wyoming District’s appeal regarding LCC’s ecclesiastical relationship with the Synod.