|
Many LCMS congregations never get to vote for a lay
delegate or for nominees for President and Vice President of the Synod?
All too often the pastors are now picking the lay
delegates and making all the nominations for the 2004 LCMS Convention and
the lay people don’t get to vote.
Every three years, each of the 6200 congregations of
the LCMS elect one lay delegate to attend the Circuit Forum where the
delegate to the LCMS Convention is selected.
This writer has talked with and corresponded with lay
people across the Synod. Again
and again I hear that they never knew about the election of their
congregational delegate. They
never knew when or where the Circuit Forum was meeting.
They never heard about or saw the ballot from the Synod.
Everything was handled in the pastor’s office and they weren’t
told about anything relating to the 2004 Convention.
The Convention is supposed to be LCMS congregational
polity in action. But the
reality is, that too many members of LCMS congregations have no idea when
and where the Circuit Forum meets, who their lay delegate is, or, for that
matter, what a Circuit Forum is.
If they ask questions, such as “Who picked the
congregational delegate?” or “Who choose the nominees for the
Convention?” they are identified as divisive troublemakers unworthy of an
answer.
This raises the question as to whether the 2004 LCMS
Convention is really an honest Convention or is it the best convention the
clergy can stack? There is
little wonder why the Synod is shrinking when it is becoming a Synod of the
clergy, for the clergy, and by the clergy.
There be should a screening of all delegates to the
2004 Convention. Every pastoral
delegate to the 2004 LCMS Convention who did not hold a voters’ meeting to
elect a lay delegate from his congregation and another Voters’ Meeting to
choose Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees, should be expelled from
the Synod for usurping the congregation’s authority.
Every lay delegate who was hand picked by the pastor
without a vote of the congregation should be refused admission to the
Convention.
It doesn’t matter if the Pastor thinks he has the
spiritual gift of CEO and PLI-leadership training or if he is the
hyper-euro-Lutheran reincarnation of Pope John the Twenty Third, the effect
is still the same. They know
best and they will do all the picking and choosing for the congregation.
How many LCMS lay people actually know that the 2001
LCMS Convention reaffirmed Walther’s Church and Ministry as the official
doctrine and practice of the LCMS?
One of the reasons that the Synod was so effective in
drawing Christians to join its congregations was the opportunity to practice
their Christian freedom as lay members.
The LCMS President may have a burning fire to save the lost, but why
should they join a Synod that is giving up the priesthood of all believers?
Let’s pray that the usurpers be removed from the
Synod.
|