The every three years LCMS National Convention finished up its business this week. There really isn’t that much to report. It went as scripted. This is what I mean by that. In the run-up to a convention individual members (pastors and congregations), voting circuits (groups of congregations that elect the representatives to the convention) and even entire districts in their conventions can send memorials to the national convention. And they Do! Hundreds of them. Those memorials are grouped and divided by something called floor committees. A floor committee is a working group of members of the Synod that receive memorials and reconcile them together into floor motions. Hundreds of memorials, many of them duplicative, are reduced to a number of motions that the floor committees deem important enough for the time of the roughly 1000 representatives gathered. This is important because it only meets every three years and the cost is thousands of dollars per minute. Not including the vacation time the delegates themselves use. The floor committees also tend to create a couple of Omnibus motions. Omnibus motions are like the Island of Misfit toys. There is something off about them. Some of them are just “not the current thing.” Others are perfectly fine but don’t have “the rizz.” There is usually an omnibus of motherhood and apple pie motions that nobody could be against. There is another one of this is so embarrassing we are going to table it and forget it exists. And there is usually one of things that all good people agree should be rejected and it is important to say so. When I say the convention went as scripted I mean nobody extracted anything from an omnibus onto the floor. Nobody extracted an original motion to replace the floor committee work. No offered amendments from the floor to a floor committee draft were accepted. The vast majority of the elected positions went to people on “the United List” which is a list of people who wink and nod have the Synod President’s endorsement. And most of these votes ended at about 60%-40% if not 90%-10%. For what was an interesting election for the Synodical President decided by 4 votes, the convention turned into a deep ratification of the president’s desires. Even if most of the votes that were taken tended to do things like “instruct a joint seminary panel to study and report in three years.” It was the rare motion that put money or teeth into something.
There are positives out of that. You could read this a broad agreement across the church on important things. You can read it as good alignment between the elected officials of the body and the body itself. At the very least you can read it as everyone knowing the pulse of those who care the most about the Synod, those who care enough to put the time into getting elected and spending a week away from home in downtown Phoenix in July. You can also read this as excellent leadership. Both at an election organization level, but more importantly at the handling of issues between conventions. You don’t really want to send coinflip issues to the full powered legislative and deliberative body of the church. You want leadership that has studied and experimented. Because if that body decides something 50.1%-49.9% we all know it really isn’t over. And you have made the 49.9% into scofflaws until they get another crack at it. When the vote is 65%-35%, the 35% tend to get into line, or at least not parade their non-compliance.
There are also some negatives. There is a simmering split between younger representatives and the larger body, and probably not in the way you might think. It was the 70+ retired majority on the floor that was content to place most things in the “study” bucket. Those who were younger – and this might be relative as 50 is young at these things – it was the younger delegates that would have put more money and teeth into certain motions. It is the younger delegates who would have liked to direct the officers of the synod to act with more haste and determination. To make some deeper changes. That simmering split goes back underground, or I should probably say online, for another three years. Maybe three more years will temper that desire for change. Or maybe three more years will give time for the various burrs under saddles to find resolutions. Or in three years it might be interesting times.
Looking at how the sausage is made church-politically is never encouraging. We are human and being human we are sinners. And being sinners requires ways to mediate disagreements. We call that politics. Unless you want to turn toward war – politics by other means. But in line with the Theology of the Cross, God is present, even most present in this world, in the rough places. “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).” Even church-politics and Synodical Conventions are working together for good. And nothing in how the sausage is made separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39). Even if the least it might due is whet our appetite for the Return of the King.