The first meeting of the commission was held via Zoom on Sep. 26, 2019, following the reappointment of Tom Deadrick and Larry Peters to the commission. The other members of the commission are Gerhard Bode Sr., George Gude, and Neely Owen. At the first meeting, the commission organized itself with George Gude elected chairman and Larry Peters vice-chairman. For health reasons, attorney Neely Owen needed to resign from the commission and was replaced by attorney Scott Killian. The Secretary of the Synod, John Sias, who is an ex officio member of the commission, serves as the secretary of the commission, and Tom Deadrick was elected as acting secretary. George Gude was appointed as the commission member to the Commission on Handbook. 2019 Res. 9-17 directed the commission “To Study Voting Privilege in the LCMS” along with commissioned ministers to be appointed by the Council of Presidents (COP) and district presidents to be selected by the COP. John Sias and George Gude were appointed as the commissions’ members for this study. The report of this committee is published in the Workbook (Report R62). Due to the issues arising from COVID-19 restrictions, as this re-
port is written the commission has met six times in person and nine times via Zoom. The COVID-19 restrictions along with difficulties in scheduling resulted in the commission being unable to hold the joint meetings with the COP as required by 2013 Res. 6-16A. The responsibilities of the commission are delineated in the Bylaws of the Synod, –3.9.2.2.3. These responsibilities fall into two main areas: Opinions: The first area is that the commission is to interpret the Synod’s Constitution, Bylaws, and resolutions. A member of the Synod (congregation or ordained or commissioned minister) and an official board, commission, or agency of the Synod may submit a written request for such an opinion. As this report is written, the commission has issued 16 opinions, most of which are included in this Workbook (Report R65). For those interested, the published minutes of all meetings of the commission are posted at lcms.org/ccm, and these minutes include all opinions.
Review of Governing Documents: A second area of the commission’s charge is to ensure that the articles of incorporation, bylaws, and policy manuals of all the agencies of the Synod are in harmony with the Constitution, Bylaws, and resolutions of the Synod. To this end, Synod Bylaws require that any agency desiring to change its articles of incorporation or bylaws must receive prior approval from the commission. (Note: Because districts can only change bylaws at their triennial conventions, [b] provides a process by which district conventions may amend a district bylaw proposal previously submitted and approved by the commission and have the result take effect upon the commission’s subsequent approval of the amended, adopted proposal.) Experience has demonstrated that some agencies fail to submit proposed changes to their bylaws and articles to the commission, as required by . In these instances, any changes that are made to the bylaws of any agency of the Synod cannot go into effect unless and until they are approved by the commission. The definition of an agency of the Synod is found in : “Agencies include each board, commission, council, seminary, university, college, district, Concordia Plan Services, and each synodwide corporate entity.” (and associated 2016 Res. 9-02A) requires all agencies to include certain specific language in their most fundamental governing documents or to seek an exception from the Board of Directors of the Synod. Not all agencies are yet in compliance. The commission welcomes those still not in compliance to complete the process of adopting compliant articles and bylaws or seeking the noted exception from the Board of Directors.
Dispute Resolution and Expulsion Processes: Finally, the commission together with the COP maintains the Standard Operating Procedures Manuals (SOPMs) for the dispute resolution process and expulsion processes of the Synod. As a result, following each convention, the commission with the concurrence of the COP, reviews these SOPMs and makes any changes necessitated by changes to the Bylaws approved by the convention.