Synod and Christian Liberty
Having just concluded the Synod convention, now is a good time to remind ourselves what synod is. We often hear “Synod isn’t church” and “Synod is only advisory.” Both of these statements are true. That said, these statements don’t imply what a lot of people infer.
Synod isn’t church.
Per the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” Per the Augsburg Confession, the church is “the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” It is “the congregation of saints and true believers.” So the church is both bigger, and smaller, than the synod. The church is the church catholic of all times and places. And the church is found where active altars and pulpits are found.
The synod is a voluntary organization or league of local autonomous congregations who have chosen to recognize one another, and to work together, sharing certain benefits and responsibilities. A congregation outside of our synod may or may not be orthodox. There are certainly orthodox Lutheran churches who are not bound to us in synod, nor have declared fellowship with us. A local orthodox congregation might opt out of being part of our synod, whether by choosing not to join our synod in the first place, or by even leaving our synod for reasons that don’t touch upon orthodox doctrine or practice.
For example, a local congregation may decide that they don’t like the LCMS’s particular insurance or retirement package. Maybe in order to secure the benefits that they want for church workers, they may have to leave our synod and join another orthodox synod - or perhaps be organizationally and legally independent. Or maybe, a congregation doesn’t want to pay for convention expenses, or doesn’t approve of how the synod runs its seminaries, or maybe it doesn’t want to operate under synod’s 501(c)(3) number. Maybe a congregation disagrees with a specific ruling by a Dispute Resolution panel. Maybe the congregation wants something in its bylaws that the district won’t approve. A congregation can always leave the synod. Again, synod does not own congregations, and parish pastors are not employed by synod.
Synod is only advisory.
In our polity, each congregation is autonomous. It owns its own property. Therefore, synod cannot defrock a pastor. Synod cannot shut down a congregation. Synod cannot forcibly combine congregations. Synod cannot compel a congregation to have a certain pastor (or prevent a congregation from having a certain pastor), use a certain hymnal, follow a certain liturgy, or even follow the rules of the synod. Synod is indeed only advisory.
But this doesn’t mean that a congregation can do whatever it wants while remaining in synod. Obviously, if a congregation were to denounce the Trinity and become Unitarian, offer worship to a goddess, or repudiate the Bible and the Book of Concord, that congregation would (hopefully!) soon be officially removed from the roster of synod.
But in addition to being Trinitarian, worshiping the one true God, and subscribing to Scripture and the Lutheran confessions, there are expectations that synod has as conditional of congregational and rostered membership for the sake of unity and good order. And contrary to the claims of some, those requirements do not have to be scriptural. For example, member congregations of synod may not call a pastor who is not rostered by synod while remaining in synod. There is nothing in Holy Scripture that mandates any such thing. This is an extrabiblical condition that members of synod accept voluntarily. Congregations are expected to fill out certain paperwork, use synod’s 501(c)(3) status, belong to one of our districts, submit proposed bylaw changes to district for approval, and pay district and synod assessments. None of this is biblically required. A congregation may decide not to comply with such things, and either leave the synod, or be removed from the synod’s roster. And such separation based on non-compliance with such synod rules is not indicative of a lack of orthodoxy. Pastors are also required to follow certain procedures, such as filling out PIF and SET forms and submitting to the chain of command of their particular district presidents. Rostered lay workers also have similar bureaucratic responsibilities. None of this is laid out in scripture.
For the sake of good order, synod can, and does, set both biblical and nonbiblical (though not antibiblical) requirements for membership. And for the sake of order, members of synod (congregations, pastors, and lay church workers) can, and do, submit to both biblical and nonbiblical requirements for membership. In a sense, synod membership is like a marriage. It is a give-and-take. Binding congregations and pastors together into a synodical body should be to the benefit of all. If the cost of keeping a particular congregation or pastor is too great or disruptive to our unity and order, synod may remove that congregation or pastor from rostered status (though not from ministry). Conversely, if the cost of membership in synod is too great, a member may leave synod’s roster - while still continuing to operate as a church, a pastor, or other servant of the church.
Synod is voluntary all around.
Toleration of heterodoxy
There are some who argue that if there is even one heterodox member, out of the 17,000 members of synod, then remaining in synod is an act of unionism - making every member congregation and pastor heterodox. However, even marriages don’t work this way. Marital infidelity is grounds for divorce, but it is not necessary to divorce. Broken marriages can be healed through repentance and forgiveness. And this cannot be done overnight. A couple may temporarily separate to work through a process of reconciliation. Or they may even remain together during such a process. There is no one-size-fits-all. There is no computer-generated single solution to dealing with such conflict. An erring sister congregation or pastor may, or may not, be able to be brought back to the fold. And so synod must walk a tightrope between being too quick to remove a member, and too patient in letting an errant member remain. But to suggest that individual acts of infidelity in a group of 6,000 congregations and 11,000 pastors and rostered laymen automatically destroys the entire fellowship has no precedent in church (or human) history. The perfect man and the perfect church will only be found in eternity.
That said, there is another side of the coin. When synod allows members to take advantage of the forbearance of the other members of synod - or perhaps the institutional paralysis of district and synod leadership - this too is a problem. Heterodoxy that is allowed to exist and fester with impunity, being ignored and tolerated year after year, is damaging to the synod. It harms our fellowship. It is destructive of our unity and good order. It defeats the very purpose of having a synod. This probably explains the recent convention’s desire to take another look at our so-called Dispute Resolution Process.
Doctrine only, or doctrine and practice?
Doctrine is, of course, inflexible. We cannot allow members of synod to stray beyond the doctrinal boundaries of the Bible and the Book of Concord. Practice is more nuanced. There is a gray area between unity and diversity - and opinions as to where to draw the line will vary, even among synod leaders and members. In the history of the church - including the early history of the Reformation - the church has established standard worship forms that provide unity in certain ecclesiastical or state regions - including legally-binding liturgies, even as written by authors of the Formula of Concord (including the authors of Article 10 on Adiaphora). Our confessions do bind both “doctrine and ceremonies” together as a bulwark against “ungodly doctrine creep[ing] into our churches.” The idea that practice - especially ceremony - is completely free and independent of doctrine violates our confessions. Even the grammar of the conclusion of the Augsburg Confession binds the two together.
Synod and Christian liberty
Contrary to the protestations of those who have chosen to abolish the Mass while pleading “context,” it would not be out of bounds for synod to prescribe the use of certain liturgical forms, or even an approved hymnal, as a condition of synod membership. Nor would it violate scripture for synod to at least set a minimum standard liturgical ordo and require congregational members of synod to follow it. It would not be acting beyond synod’s authority to require a standard statement of closed communion to be published and practiced as a condition of synod membership. Of course, there is a balance to be struck for the sake of wisdom. But there is nothing that requires synod to adopt an “anything goes” approach to worship forms and sacramental inclusion or exclusion, especially under the rubric: “Synod isn’t church. Synod is only advisory.”
Because synod isn’t church, and because synod is advisory, and because membership in synod is voluntary, synod is free to insist upon conditions of membership, and members of synod are free to remain as members, or to quit their membership.
Thus there is Christian liberty for both synod, and for members of synod.