Synod Stories

Brian Yamabe (00:00)
Welcome to Synod Stories, a show about the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, where it's been, where it's going, and where we are. The LCMS National Convention is a little less than a year away, and with it comes a lot of questions. In our first session, we talked about nominations, overtures, and how to get involved. This time, we're going to talk more about how the convention actually works. For this, we have Dr. Martin Nolan, who is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in San Mateo, California, and former director of the Concordio Historical Institute. Dr. Nolan, thank you again for being here.

Martin Richard Noland (00:31)
Thanks for inviting me.

Brian Yamabe (00:32)
So before we talk convention, I have some housekeeping to address about the electoral circuits, which actually involves both of us. So it turns out that the peninsula, the Silicon Valley and Monterey circuits are all too small to be electoral circuits. So, but from past well, only two circuits can be combined to make an electoral circuit. So we cannot combine all three.

Martin Richard Noland (00:36)
Mm-hmm.

⁓

Brian Yamabe (00:53)
So the CNH district president has to make a call on which circuits will be combined. so we may not be, we might not be together, but yeah, so he has to make a call on to and figure out which ones he's going to combine and where the third one will go and find a home.

Martin Richard Noland (01:09)
So does that mean if you combine with the Monterey circuit, you get to play at Pebble Beach? ⁓

Brian Yamabe (01:15)
That would be nice. Alright,

so Dr. Nolan, where do you want to take us today?

Martin Richard Noland (01:23)
So first off, have a little bit of a correction. It's a small detail, but if you're going to do a nomination, it can be a big thing. So I actually started working on nominations this last week and found out that they've changed the online system. It used to be some type of PDF that you download, you fill it out, and then you send it back. Well, now it's a live online system, which means that

when you go online you have to have your data ready to go. ⁓ And so what sort of data is the nomination form going to be looking for? Now this is for the offices of secretary, all the boards, all the commissions. It does not refer to the nominations for president, first vice president, or regional vice presidents. And we'll get into some of that detail later. But anyway, for those of you making nominations,

Again go to the Synod website, and this is what you will need full name address phone email Roster class that's for church workers district and congregational membership if you don't know that talk to the person you're nominating Then you have to indicate which offices and you can do more than one apparently You intend to nominate the person for and if you're thinking they're really good you can nominate them for everything and let the convention

committee or the nomination committee figure out where they fit. Then you need at least two additional, their personal references. And that means you'll need, let's say, John Smith's postal address, phone, and email address for the two references. And then you have to give, and this has always been done, an evaluation of their good standing in the church, their experience.

and also then general aptitudes or suitability for positions. So you have to have all that ready before you go online because it's not like you compare it and then just download it. So be aware of that. So that'll take a little bit of work in advance. It does make it easier for the committee on convention nominations and the secretary not have to deal with all those PDFs. It now just filters everything ⁓ more automatically.

I have to say, John Sias, he was into computers before he went into the ministry, and this guy's just a genius. He's made a lot of things a lot simpler and more efficient at the synodical level. So thanks to John for that.

Brian Yamabe (04:04)
the reference thing that you mentioned might be a little bit harder because you might not know who that or you would have to talk to the person to get them to tell you which who you want to be the references kind of thing you might not know who they should.

Martin Richard Noland (04:13)
Yeah,

that's why you have to talk to the person to get their permission anyway to nominate and then when you talk to them That's the time to say well who are your references and can you give me their contact information? so yeah right there is where you do that and The the last part of it is no your judgment on it, and you should be fair. You're not just

You're not just trying to sell the product as it were. Be fair, and that's very helpful to the... ⁓ But I think really the committee, when they get those personal references, that tends to be what they really look at carefully, because you're just doing the job of trying to get people into the pipeline. anyway, that's a little bit different from what I told the audience in the last series or the last session. So just be aware of that.

Brian Yamabe (04:40)
You

Sounds good.

So where would you like to take us? ⁓

Martin Richard Noland (05:11)
Well, have, there's three things we need to talk about today. And the first is the process I just mentioned, the nominations for secretary boards and commissions. And it covers a lot of offices. What I want to do is we talked last time about the deadlines and some of the basics. Now what I want you to do is to the audience to understand how this actually works.

Because well, maybe your nomination will get declined and then you think well, they just don't like me You know, I'm from San Francisco and nobody likes San Francisco anymore. No, it has nothing to do with that So it helps to understand the process and also ⁓ When it comes to overtures There are some pitfalls there and if you're not aware of the pitfalls you fall into the pit and so well your overture you just it won't get anywhere so

Today we're going to talk about the two types of nominations, how that process works through the synod, and then about the overtures. And I hope this is helpful. People that have done this multiple times, and they may not learn anything new, but you never know. I've done this multiple times since I've been in the ministry as a pastor. And they change the process every once in a while, so I could be wrong. And I'm mixing up something from 40 years ago.

So the ultimate authority, again, go to the website where talks about the convention. ⁓ It's the LCMS.org website. Okay, so let's start with the nominations for secretary boards and commissions. So how does this work? First off, an individual or a committee, could be a board of elders, considers, that means you talk about, and propose a nominee. The second...

step is you get the approval for the nominee. And while you're doing that, get that information I just talked about. Third, you complete and send the nomination form before the deadline. These are real deadlines. Like I said last time, if you don't meet the deadline, they're not going to make any forgiveness for that. There's lots of forgiveness in the Lutheran Church but not past a deadline. And the one for this is October 18th. So that's coming up

You know, this takes a while to do this work, so start working on it now. Where does it go after that? This nomination that you've sent. Somebody you hope would get elected. You think they'll really do a good job. Well, that nomination goes to the Missouri Senate Secretary's office. That's a corporate secretary. It's not an office secretary. And John is, he's brilliant. And that office is well run. ⁓ It explains this in the bylaws.

how everything I'm talking about comes right out of the current bylaws. So then that's kept by the secretary in his office, now it's all electronic, until the beginning of the committee for convention nominations. they meet, now they probably meet by video conference. I'm guessing they probably could save a lot of money. They probably at least have one meeting where they're all together in the same place. ⁓

It is received by the committee to stack, you know, for this process there's a lot of nominations. And then the bylaws say that the, I'll call it the CCN, that's short, it's an acronym. It organizes its work in whatever way it deems necessary. So if you've been on the committee for convention nominations before and then you go to the meeting and you say,

We never did it this way before. You know, that's Missouri Synod way of saying, you got to do it my way because I've never done it this way before. Well, the bylaws say once they organize and elect the chair, they can do it however they want. Now, what is the CCN supposed to do? So the first thing they look at, and here is helpful when you're nominating somebody, they use the duties and requirements of each position

decide who ends up on their list. Now what are the duties? It's in here someplace. I have, by the way, an older handbook, so if I lose this it's not a big deal. So this is the handbook of the Synod. And let's say you want to nominate, well you could nominate Pastor Weller for regent at Concordia Irvine. Well you go and look up the Regents of Concordia University.

And then you look at each one of the offices, there's a bylaw that explains what the expectation of the Synod is for the people that serve there. And so the first thing that the Committee for Convention Nominations does, let's say they got 20 nominations for a pastor to serve on the regents at Irvine. The first thing they're going to do is go to that and

Let's say half of those fit and half of them don't. Well, they're immediately going to take the half that don't fit the regulations and they'll put them over there. It's nothing personal. And you know, there could be somebody on the nomination committee that even knows the person that was nominated or the person that it has nothing to do with that. It has to fit what's in here. So you as a nominator, in order to be successful with your nomination, go to that first.

And there's an index in the back so you can figure out which border commission or office is being considered. Because that's what they're going to use on their end. So that's very important. Then, now this is what happens behind the scenes, behind the curtain, you know, the Wizard of Oz.

was behind the curtain and nobody ever knew what he was doing. Well, in the bylaws it tells you how things work, but you'll never see it. You just see the final results. So after the initial slate, then the CCN consults with the CEO, and that's chief executive officer, of each Synod Y corporation. And there's five, six of those.

CHI, CPH, LCEF, LCMS Foundation, and the CUS Board. That's the Board of Directors. Each of those has a CEO and they'll say, these are the people that have been nominated for your, do you have any inclinations, preferences, or say, wait, we've had problems with this person or whatever. So you may think, well, that's kind of unfair, but do we want to cause trouble by putting somebody in there?

⁓ It doesn't really have to do with preferences, personal alliances or anything like that. It's just good business, I think. I mean, we could have a better system, but that's what they're going to do. Then for the regents of the seminaries, universities and colleges, the CCN will consult with the synod president, so Matthew Harrison gets to see all those. The Concordia University Synod Board, as the president and chairman of regents,

for their input on the candidates. then, let's see, there's some other things. The SynEd, from past experience, we had 10 colleges for a while, and we're really down to five, corporate anyway. And they found that there were people that were nominated who really didn't have sufficient business experience.

doesn't mean you to have an MBA. ⁓ So there are new bylaws, I'd say, in the last 10 to 15 years. And those are, I'm not going to read the whole numbers because the numbering is impossible, but it has to do with the qualifications for the CUS board and also for the regents, but especially for the CUS board. And that is on page 175 and 136.

Brian Yamabe (13:28)
you

Martin Richard Noland (13:43)
So if you're going to nominate somebody for those positions for the CUS, make sure you check that out. mean, if they'd like to have some lawyers, they'd like to have some CPAs, they'd like to have some people with experience as CEOs. And after that, well, certainly they have pastors. So those are the theological experts. ⁓ They're pretty picky these days. It wasn't that way 15 years ago, but they found out that you really need to have

sharp person on the board of the Uncordia University so that basically the president can't get away with stuff that shouldn't be done. That's the job of the Board of Regents and if they're ignorant about how things work, ⁓ some bad stuff can happen. ⁓

Brian Yamabe (14:23)
Ha

I would

interject that that actually was the problem with Portland when I got was on that board. There was the business that the deal that had been made was like a something I saw from the dot com era was like, oh my gosh, this and I was talking to the interim CFO, and we were both talking these were these were startup numbers with the hockey graph. And it was like, there's no my gosh, I can't believe anyone pitched this and got it accepted in that, you know, in in modern in the modern era, it was it was a little scary.

Martin Richard Noland (15:02)
And you had the experience of being in the internet dot-com boom, you worked in the computer industry. You know how those things work. Entrepreneurs, and boy, are they salesmen. Right? You know, you hear all this stuff about AI, and I think, hmm, computers are AI from the beginning. So what's new about this? Right? mean, so yeah, so it's really, it may look like a lot of, ⁓

Brian Yamabe (15:15)
Yes.

Martin Richard Noland (15:32)
more attention to detail than needs to be. it's because of examples like what you just mentioned that we have some pretty strict requirements now for regents. And I think that's a good thing. OK, what else? Then what they end up with and the product for each position. So let's again, you nominated your pastor for regent at Concordia Irvine.

The final result from the CCN is that there will be two candidates at least and one alternate in case before the convention one of them drops out. So there would be in the book the biographical synopsis, which last time was if can reach this without making a mess. Last time it looked like this. I showed this on the last show. It's a biographical synopsis and then

here you have the people that the CCN took from they had 20 and they reduced it to 2. So that's you're gonna if you're a delegate and you nominated somebody you're gonna say hey where's the person that I nominated? Well it's the job of the CCN if they get more than two they have to drop everybody else out. Now the question comes about well if you're a delegate or a friend there

Brian Yamabe (16:55)
Mm.

Martin Richard Noland (17:02)
Can other people be put on the ballot? Yes, they can. And that's the difference between the first, what we're talking about right now, and the president and vice presidents. Those things, it's an entirely different system. There's no floor nominations. But in these, there could be. So you had a stack of 20. And poor Pastor Weller, didn't he?

He didn't make it. He's still in the stack. Whoops. He's still in the stack and you didn't see him there. Well, now there is floor nominations allowed. Now, before we get to that, so there's two candidates at least and one alternate. That's the product for each position. And then this is posted. This information is posted at least five months prior on the Synod website, in the Reporter and Witness, and in the Conventional Workbook.

I believe it's around February 18th is when we find out who the nominees are that have passed all this vetting. ⁓ So what about the floor nominations? Presently it's bylaw 3.12.3.7. You have four sets of numbers. I like the old letter and number comp. Anyway, there are rules for at the convention to make a floor nomination.

Brian Yamabe (18:16)
You

Martin Richard Noland (18:27)
But the rule is that a delegate there, nobody else, it has to be a delegate, can make ⁓ when they present the slate at the convention, they will ask are there any floor nominations, and then people may get to the mic, and they'll say yes. then the secretary, usually the secretary might be the president, or his representative will say,

has this person received a prior nomination? In other words, you as a delegate can't just now make a nomination at the convention floor. You had to have sent this person through the process. So poor old Pastor Weller, his thing is still sitting there. It's actually in the briefcase of the chairman of the committee of convention nominations. And you would say, I nominate Pastor Weller

Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, and I nominated him. I know you have his paperwork. So then the chairman or his assistant will go into that big stack and they'll say, and this is while the convention's going on. yeah, we do have Pastor Weller here. So then if the convention approves the floor nomination, which it goes simple vote, then you have a third candidate and this can go on for a while. Now,

there is an exception to that. In some cases, the convention may feel that the candidate is so well known and they all think, why did nobody ever give his nomination in the first place? The convention itself, by majority, can overrule the exception so that somebody who's not been prior nominated can be simply floor nominated.

But then it opens it up to everybody. So then you could, at the convention, if the convention does that, you say, hey Joe, would you like to be nominated for? You say, yeah. And then it's chaos, because all the work of the CCN then may go down the tube. So that very rarely happens. So what this tells you is if you want somebody to be nominated, get it in before the deadline, because it really

Brian Yamabe (20:33)
.

Martin Richard Noland (20:51)
Practically speaking, it is a deadline. And even if they don't get into the book, you could find a delegate that's willing to bring them forward. And if their paperwork was received, then they might get elected. ⁓ Then finally, it goes at the convention to the Committee on Elections. And they go through the normal process of elections one at a time. And if you don't know, the delegates have a keypad.

punch in your code and then you punch in the numbers yes, no, and finally you'll see on the board, that's the large screens that are there, the name of the candidates for each office and you select and it's a runoff. So the highest ones are retained, the lowest ones drop off. And then you have an election. And that goes on throughout the convention. Usually they start with the president, but I'll talk about that in a minute.

the president, vice presidents, and then the secretary, and then they go to all the boards and commissions. So do you have any questions right at this point about that process?

Brian Yamabe (21:59)
So that and when is it required, like when there's a single ⁓ position, it like, they, it by, does it have to end up with someone with a majority or, they whittle them down so that someone has a majority or is it just like highest number gets it, but you know, like highest percentage, it's whittles down to someone gets a majority.

Martin Richard Noland (22:22)
Yeah, I think

it almost always goes to the majority. There may be some exceptions to that. don't remember. yeah, almost always. So it's a runoff. And because they're the keypads, it happens right away.

Brian Yamabe (22:25)
Okay.

It's fast.

yeah, that makes sense.

Martin Richard Noland (22:38)
Okay, so are we ready for the next process? Okay, so the next thing has to do with, and this one is a new process. We used to do everything in the way I just described, and once the Synod realized, we have these keypads, and we have electronic, and members from their websites can actually do nominations, and elections even.

Brian Yamabe (22:41)
Alright, sounds good.

Martin Richard Noland (23:07)
And so in the last 20 years or so, we've gone more to online nominations and the online election only of the president of Senate. Now, why did they do that? ⁓ The idea was that every congregation then gets a chance. Because at the convention, you only have delegates. At this session, you talked about the electoral circuit.

Well, it can't be three counties or three circuits. It's got to be two, but it could be like 12 congregations. So are you really represented? It's an indirect representation that way. the people that came up with this said it would be best if the synod president is directly represented by the congregational vote. So I'll explain how this works. So don't get it confused with what I've talked about before.

that have been around for a while and remember the old way. Yeah, this is all new. Again, within the last 20 years or so. So how does this work? Now, every congregation, the first thing that we talked about, the nominations, are people who volunteer and decide, I want to help in the process. As long as they're Missouri Synod member of a congregation, anybody can make the nomination. Now here, it's a congregational process. And so

Your officers should be aware of this, and maybe your voters will be involved with it. But I'll explain how this works. So the first thing is a congregation or its committee. And I recommend that a committee does this. We just had our council, which is a board of directors, basically, of our congregation. met this week, and I.

made a proposal that our Board of Elders would consider all of these various actions a nomination election. They would just take care of it on behalf of the congregation instead of having a series of voters because our voters don't like meeting that often. You know, it's the Bay Area. We play golf all the time. They don't really like a lot of meetings and I don't mind. ⁓ So, congregation itself or a committee

considers and proposes the nominees for three offices, president, first vice president. Both of those are full-time jobs and a regional vice president. And for us, ⁓ there is a map. I should explain this first. The regional vice president, I think there's five of them. And there's a map of the United States with our districts. And you can download this.

from the Synod website. can see the ⁓ Missouri Synod on the west coast is that green bunch of states put together. You see that? Yeah, and California, Nevada, Hawaii is right here. So we're somewhere. Wow, look how close Hawaii is. ⁓ But anyway, so together, they're one, two, three, four, five, six. Well, actually, these are together with those districts. So it's, I think it's

Brian Yamabe (26:10)
Yeah.

Martin Richard Noland (26:23)
It's five districts that make up a region. so the congregations in those districts vote for their regional vice president. ⁓ that those people, the president, first vice president, regional, I think they're up every term, every three years. ⁓ So, okay, so the regional vice president,

How do you know whether a person is in one region or another? Because let's say you have a friend that you'd like to nominate. he lives, let's say, because you know California geography. He lives somewhere between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. Do you know which district he's in?

Brian Yamabe (27:17)
He's probably, well, he could, he's right on the border. he's like in Paso Robles, it's like the furthest south in our, in the CNH. And then it goes below that is ⁓ Pacific Southwest.

Martin Richard Noland (27:24)
Okay.

Right, So let's say, and now we're just talking about the district, but that's because you and I know these boundaries. Let's say he lives, what's south of Paso Robles? Solvang. So let's say he lives in Solvang, but he goes to church in Paso Robles. Now there's a problem. So the bylaw has a rule for this, and you need to know about this in terms of

Brian Yamabe (27:33)
Yep. Yeah.

wow.

Martin Richard Noland (27:57)
regional vice president. If he lives across the border, I don't mean the Mexican border, the Canadian border. If he lives across the border of a region, it's the region in which he lives. So if he lived in Solvang, then he would be with the Pacific Southwest District. Now these are not regional borders. I'm not going to... you can look at the map, but that's the rule. So before you consider a person for your region,

You have to because well here's the other thing some ministers I don't know how this works with laymen, but they're rostered in a district and they live somewhere else Which to me is kind of weird You know do they really know where they belong but this can be confusing when it comes to this so ⁓

Brian Yamabe (28:42)
You

Martin Richard Noland (28:50)
It's where they live, their residence, as it shows in the Lutheran annual. That's for the church workers. That's what makes them eligible for that particular region. So get that straight first. OK, then you need to get approval by the nominee. President, first vice president, regional vice president. I don't know any of those guys that would be eligible that would turn you down. It's not as important as the other ones. However,

⁓ You know if a guy has been in an office for a long time Maybe his wife says it's time for you to retire or maybe because let's say the first vice president job That's a full-time thing and maybe he says I've done enough here. I need to get back into the parish So before you nominate him, I mean it'd be a waste of nomination, but it's probably a smart thing to ask him Send an email text whatever are you's gonna let your name stand

And this would be somebody that's already in office. And I've done that. So I know that our regional ⁓ West-Southwest, it's going to be open. So we have to think of somebody new. And then also ask the person that you're thinking about nominating. So let's say I would decide, Pastor Weller. Well, he's going to say, no, I don't want that. No, no, no. I'm not ready for that level of politics.

Brian Yamabe (30:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Richard Noland (30:20)
You know, serious, you know, lot of not everybody's cut out for all these jobs. So get approval from the nominee and also from the person if that's there currently in the office, unless you don't care and don't mind if they get dislodged. But so you got to do a little bit homework there or talk to people that know these. The next thing is that the congregations will receive official ballots by mail.

around October 18th. So that's coming up in a month and a half or so. And the deadline for filling out the ballots is February 18th, so you have some time. But your office secretaries at your churches should watch for this. It should be from the Senate and it will have the official ballots. Now then, where do you go from there? The Voters' Assembly

or the governing body that's given the authority to do this. if there's a gov... like my Board of Elders, they don't necessarily in our bylaws have the authority to do nominations. That's why had the council, the Board of Directors give them that authority. It has to be explicit. So if it's in your bylaws or you have a motion that was passed at the voters or the Board of Directors, that's enough.

then they act. So they nominate one or two eligible, these would all be ordained candidates for each office, president, first vice president, regional vice president. And then before February 18th, two of the officers, and they should be the corporate officers, not the pastor, they log in with the website and they send in the names that the committee or the congregation has chosen, two for each.

And ⁓ now it's a group called Yes Elections by February 18th. So then that goes electronically. It goes into a data bank. at some point, the Secretary of Senate and other officers will pull this down after February 18th. And how this works then is that the ballot that goes to the convention

also then for the president to all the congregations is the persons who have for the president the five highest number of nominations for the first vice president it's the 20 highest numbers and for the regional vice president it's the five highest so you might say well it doesn't really matter well yeah in this case the nominations are a way of

ranking, the desirability of certain candidates. So the Senate already is expressing its will by the number of nominations that candidates get. So let's say that you nominated Robert Weld, ⁓ our friend, your good circuit visitor. Well, actually, he's a vice president now, And he accepted it, and it went through the process.

Brian Yamabe (33:16)
Hmm.

He's the Vice President of the District, yeah.

Martin Richard Noland (33:45)
Well, because people were listening to the program, he got 500 nominations. In fact, he got more than even the President of the Senate. Well, he's definitely going to be in the top. So what happens there is that if he's a regional vice president, that goes on to the convention. First vice president, that election goes on to the convention. But when it comes to the president, the president of the Senate then is elected, as I said before, it's elected by the congregations.

So then your congregation needs to choose a point, whatever, one ordained person from your congregation, one layman, and they must register in advance by March 15th. The Synod website tells how to do that. When you get the paperwork from Synod on October 18th, it should explain how to do that. But you have to register. So you can't just at the last minute.

Oh, I'm going to vote. whoever is your electors, they have to register in advance. Then the presidential elections happen June 6 to 9, which is, well, that's more than a month before the convention. And then there's runoffs, because you've got five candidates. And if the president doesn't get elected on the first ballot, which I think is a majority, 50%, then it's got to keep going.

And this will continue to June 30th. So the people that volunteer to serve as electors have to be available to be able to get on to the website, the internet, in that period of time. If they're going to be busy on vacation or like most of your friends over there at Shepherd Valley, they go to Hawaii during June. Come on! I don't want to be busy with stuff like that. They're not going to be good people to do this just because they're busy.

Brian Yamabe (35:28)
Hahaha.

Martin Richard Noland (35:36)
So make sure you get people that are willing and able to serve during that period of time. Then first, the first thing that happens at the convention, and this is middle of July after the initial introductions, the opening service and all that. The first order of business is that the president of the Senate is announced. I don't know, that may be announced prior, but it's official.

once it's announced by the chairman or his representative. And then the next thing is the election of the first vice president and the regional vice president. And what sounds strange is the denominations came from the districts and the regions, but the convention as a Senate decides who are going to be the regional vice presidents. So it could be a rather strange thing.

Brian Yamabe (36:30)
Hmm.

Martin Richard Noland (36:34)
that somebody is well known in his region, but the rest of the Senate doesn't know him. And so they see a name that everybody knows, and the Senate elects somebody that nobody in the region knows. That's the way they put this together. So just be aware of that. ⁓ So they elect the first vice president as the first office, and after the announcement of that results, and they go to the regional vice presidents.

And the final thing with that is that they rank them. So after your first vice president, you have second, third, fourth, and fifth. And why do you do that? That's because they're only one heartbeat away from becoming president. You know, they say, you know, so if you lose a president due to disability or death, it goes down to the next person. And we don't want to have to go through this whole process that we do every three years. So we have five of those.

God forbid that they all pass away at the same time. Then we'd have to, we could elect you, Brian Yamavi. You'd figure out how to do this. ⁓ Again, there are no floor nominations for president, first vice president, or regional vice president. It's all determined in advance. The convention is only selecting in the nominees. So here again, the nominations really count.

Brian Yamabe (37:31)
you

You

Martin Richard Noland (37:58)
in the sense of the secretary, the board of commissions, the quality of the person that you sent, their capabilities, their leadership quality, their user experience. That makes a big difference on the commissions and boards. And on the case of the nominations, the number of nominations makes the most... that's really what gets a person elected. So even if you don't do any of the other nominations,

every congregation really should be involved in the election or the nomination election, a president, first vice president, and regional. Finally, just to let delegates know, again you use those electronic keypads and you see the immediate result and then you have a president, and a first vice president, and a regional. So that's it for the nominations. Then I have a little talk about the overtures if we still have time.

Brian Yamabe (38:56)
Yep. I do have a question about the first vice president. I remember at the time there was, I don't remember this, it ended up this way, but there was the idea that the president could have influence on the slate for first vice president because they wanted him to get along with them. I don't know if that ever happened, but that was like one of the things that when I was in the 2010, when the big restructuring, they talked about doing that. I don't remember if that became a thing or not.

Martin Richard Noland (38:57)
Go ahead.

⁓ yeah.

you

Brian Yamabe (39:24)
Do you happen to remember or no?

Martin Richard Noland (39:27)
Yeah, we'll see. I'm trying to think how we used to do things. And you could appeal that way, but really what it ends up with is that the number of nominations determines who's on the slate on both cases. So you've got, in fact, it's published here, I think. It's at the beginning. So yeah, here we have the report.

of this is from the biographical synopsis from the last convention. we have, ⁓ so this is the president of synod position and they had five candidates and they were Ben Ball of, let's see where's he at, Illinois, Patrick Ferry now lives in Texas, ⁓ Matt Harrison who was the incumbent,

⁓ Peter Lang, who was first vice president and lives in Missouri, and then Richard Snow, who is in Seward, Nebraska. Those are the five candidates. so then, but in addition to that, it was kind of interesting right at the beginning of that, in this page, you can see all these names. They give the number of ballots. So President Harrison in 2023 received

Well, 1,193 nominations. And then Patrick Ferry, the next leader, the next up, was 511. So ⁓ Harrison got twice the number of nominations, which is not unusual. He's an incumbent. And he hasn't done anything stupid, as far as I know.

⁓ I'd have to talk to his wife Kathy. She's my yeah, but that's all private, you know ⁓ and then the next one after that Richard Snow was in the 200s and Peter and Ben were down in 100 so and after that it drops off Larry Rast 75 Chris S cut 29 and the Don the it goes that whole list is anybody that got at least five and then you have People that got four votes people got three

Brian Yamabe (41:22)
Thank you.

Martin Richard Noland (41:47)
people that got two and even one. Now on occasion I've been on that one vote. You never get up there. Somebody liked me in some congregation, that's all. But you really have to have a lot of people. It's my point being the nominations because the delegates gonna look at that and say, hmm, well there's a lot of people that like Matt Harrison, so I'll just vote for him. You know, that's the way it works. Then when you get to the first vice president, this goes on and on.

Brian Yamabe (41:53)
Thanks. ⁓

Martin Richard Noland (42:17)
In might even have your name in there. Wait, you have to be ordained, sorry. But Weller's name might even be in there. I'm serious. He could be. ⁓ I'd have to ask him. He would know. again, you have anybody over four and then three, two, one. And then there's some other. I don't know why these guys are on there. ⁓ And then you have, you've got the Facebook. You've got the guy's picture, his accomplishments, and it goes

Well, there's 20 candidates there. And who was finally elected the incumbent in 2023, Peter Lang was re-elected. And then you've got, and this is what you've got to study as a delegate. You need to look at this and say, you don't always want to follow the crowd because maybe there's a guy in there that maybe doesn't get as many nominations, but he's really good. And maybe you know him, you know he's really good. So.

Then there's the regionals, and again, those are five for each. ⁓ So boy, there's some young guys in here. They just look like they're straight out of college. Yeah, yeah, you know, I've been 40 years in the ministry, so they all look really young to me. But ⁓ yeah, so you get all the way, and then after that comes the Secretary of Synod, which we had two candidates. And then the rest of the book is the rest of the boards and commissions.

Brian Yamabe (43:25)
You ⁓

Martin Richard Noland (43:44)
So ⁓ I don't know if that really answered your question, but we probed into there a little bit.

Brian Yamabe (43:51)
Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, we have time for whatever you have next. So over to you, yes.

Martin Richard Noland (43:55)
study overtures okay,

there is a very helpful flowchart and I'm going to go through this real quick because you can read it you can download it from the sentence website it looks like this and This is one of the things Because John see us was a computer scientist. We do you guys do flow charts all the time, right?

It's how you figure out the logic of an algorithm and then you write on the basis of flowchart So you can see the computer stuff coming through here. It's great. I love it So I'll go through this real quick just to give me an idea How the overture works and there's some key things you need to know if you want to get your overture considered by the convention so ⁓ Let's see here it says if you are a member of an LCMS church your congregation

can bring your ideas or concerns before the convention. It's your congregation, not you as an individual. So you have to convince your congregation, officers, whatever, that they're going to do this because their name is going to be on the overture. And if it's a really stupid thing, sometimes it is, people will read that and say, who's in charge of that congregation?

That's like the stupidest thing I ever saw. mean, congregations have a right not to consider things that they're... and often it's innocent. Usually it's innocent. People just don't know how the Synod works and anybody else that says, this is just not going to work. ⁓ But anyway, the point being you got to work through the congregation. So the congregation in a voter's assembly has to adopt your overture. It can also go through the circuit or the district, but for most people it's the congregation.

So what you do is you write it up, you get it adopted by the congregation, and then you send it to the president of the Senate. And there's an email address. It's called overtures at LCMS.org, and they prefer to receive those by February 1st. ⁓ There is a deadline, maybe that's February 15th. I don't have that right here. I talked about it last session. Now here is the exceptions.

This is where you really don't want to fall down because they'll block it right away. And they will not accept. That means when it gets to the president's office, he and his staff will look at all the overtures and they'll have a pile over here, discard. And the discards are following what this says. So you have to read this carefully. ⁓ So the exceptions are

if an overture refers to cases in judicial process or the suspension of members. we do have church courts. There's a variety of names for them. Right now I have actually basically two systems. But if some people are in conflict or congregations are in conflict, information about that cannot show up in the overture. Because the synod says,

we have a place for that to be resolved. And that's the judicial process, not the legislative process. So that's the first thing. If you even have one half of a sentence that refers to the conflict between Brian Yomabi and Ronald McDonald, I'm sorry, even though Ron's going to win, it's not going to show. It immediately goes into discard pile. The second thing is libel or slander

Brian Yamabe (47:30)
you

Martin Richard Noland (47:39)
or things that may be subject, the synod, to libel or slander because they publish it. So this is all published and it becomes part of the permanent record. And so anybody that it's mentioned in there, and it might be a slander, know, Eighth Commandment type of thing, again, it goes right into the discard pile. Doesn't go any farther. ⁓ The final point is that if the president and his staff recognizes that

there's statements in that that are materially an error or misrepresent truth ⁓ or character then again it goes in the discard pile and then this this is not so happy is they will ask the district president of the congregation to counsel with them you know that this is not the time to be playing around ⁓ we don't we tell the truth we're honest and we try to be Christian

So anyway, beware of those exceptions. There's room for legislation. There's not room for things that are against the Eighth Commandment or things that are being processed through the judicial system. So please remember that. ⁓ Then after it's been accepted, assuming here's the discard pile over here, these are the ones that passed, then the president of the synod

it's his priority, his responsibility to appoint floor committees. Now what's a floor committee? They're not the people that go around after the convention and mop up all the mess. That's not a floor committee. A floor committee means people that meet to consider overtures and they're usually by topics. So you'll have one floor committee that deals with higher education, maybe a separate one if there's a lot of

If there's a lot of them that deal with seminaries, they might have one just for the seminaries. Let's see if this is working. OK. Sorry, my plugs fell out. I'm not used to these. OK, back to where I was. ⁓ So then the overtures go to the floor committees, and it's their job to rewrite them. So when you get to the, when you see the workbook, say, well, that's not what we wrote. Well, they'll publish your overture.

But what goes to the convention is something that is maybe simplified because we're asking a lot of the delegates anyway to read all this stuff. And in many cases, congregations respond to the same situations or phenomena in the same way. Well, and they're just going to put those together. And then all the congregations that submitted it on that topic, let's say,

Let's say they're afraid of having clown worship. I thought of Ronald McDonald. So you get 20 congregations that are against clown worship. They'll probably put that all into one ⁓ resolution. This then, after the overture is accepted, they go, see. He publishes the workbook, and that's available by April 25.

Brian Yamabe (50:39)
You

Martin Richard Noland (51:02)
⁓ And then congregations, pastors and delegates may express comments on the overtures in the workbook to the Secretary of Senate. A lot of people don't do that, but they can. And then those comments are forwarded to the floor committees. ⁓ The floor committees determine the content and priority of resolutions, so they decide which come first. And if your resolution is at the very bottom, they may run out of time.

Sometimes they're put in what they call omnibus resolutions or overtures and that does not mean it's a bus that's running around. I know that the British have omnibuses, but when we use the term it means ⁓ basically it's already been dealt with or there is a committee or board that does this all the time and why do we need to spend the conventions time? ⁓ Then they're made available

The proposed resolutions that come from the floor committee go to a booklet called Today's Business. It's also online and the Today's Business comes out every day. The first one is available by mid-June and so you have maybe a couple of weeks to read through that as a delegate. And then the stuff that's in Today's Business, that's the wording that the chairman, that's the president of the Senate.

gives to the convention to consider, they may amend it, and then you go through the whole parliamentary process. ⁓ There is also the chance with what they call open hearings. So right at the beginning of the convention, you can go to a floor committee and say, ⁓ I saw something in this one. It doesn't make any sense. And you can point it out. And I've had success with this. That's probably the most helpful way if you see

minor. In other words, you're not opposed to the whole idea. You might be, but in order to ⁓ reduce confusion, you say, this statement in here just doesn't make sense. least I don't understand it. And so talking at the open hearings, and it says all are welcome to participate. So even if you're not a delegate, I guess you can go to open hearing. I've never done that, but I have gone when I'm a delegate.

So then the floor committees finalize it and then it goes to the convention to adopt or decline or amend. And then you have your resolutions. And once you have a resolution, whoever it refers to, like if it says the president of the Senate must do this, then he has to do it. And by this process, so not only is the convention elected the person, they also, through the overture actions, they can tell those people exactly what to do.

Now, things that the convention doesn't say what to do, then that's up to the officer to figure out what's, what did that convention tell us in this area? But if it can be very specific, you can tell the Board of Regents of Concordia Irvine, you are moving to San Jose, California in Alamodin Valley next year. And then they have to do it. Now, nobody's going to adopt that. You know, they know it doesn't make sense.

But sometimes the Senate has moved. It's possibility. So once the convention has worked through it, the officers, the boards, they have to do what the convention says. And if they disagree with it, then it's a mess. But just understand that through this process, you as an individual layman in the Missouri Senate, you can have a big effect on things that are happening in the Missouri Senate.

Brian Yamabe (54:48)
Nice. So I have two questions on overtures. what if some congregation was a little bit excited or something and they actually in an overture like express something that was antithetical to our doctrine. Is that the pile that goes no and you get a visit? that, would that, I mean, would somebody do, you like if they wanted us to explore.

Martin Richard Noland (54:50)
Okay.

Brian Yamabe (55:13)
I'm guessing if we wanted to explore women's ordination, that would be an omnibus because we've done that already and we don't need to talk about it. But if they said something more extreme than that, I'm not even sure what, like we should study, you know, transgender pastorate or something. Would that, you know, could that possibly go in the no stack and say we might need to visit you kind of thing? Is that.

Martin Richard Noland (55:33)
Well, it's what goes into the discard pile are things that are materially in error. In other words, you can advocate for something, even something strange like transgenderism. But if you said, for example, that Martin Luther was in favor of transgenderism, well, that's materially an error. I've read a lot of Luther, and all the people in favor of LGBTQ stuff

Brian Yamabe (55:42)
Okay. Okay.

What?

Martin Richard Noland (56:02)
They've never come up with a quote and they've tried from Luther that would be... so that's materially an error. It's a false statement. so it gives the... well the president pretty obligated, he puts it in the discard pile. Because we don't want to be confusing the delegates. mean, part of it, it's an educational experience. And so if you have a lot of stuff that goes in there that confuses them, then they're going to make bad decisions.

You want them to know the truth about things and that's why that's there. but if it's, it can be controversial. mean, transgeserism would be controversial in the Missouri Synod, but if there's nothing in it that's materially untrue, then it wouldn't go in the Discard. They might go to Omnibus because we have spoken, we have materials. CTCR has done documents on homosexuality and things like that.

But maybe somebody came up with something and well, nobody's ever thought about this or addressed this. Can the CTCR please issue a report on this issue? And the CTCR, they all scratch their head and say, well, why don't we think of that? And it'll go through, which is a very helpful thing, even though it's maybe controversial. Go ahead.

Brian Yamabe (57:20)
Yeah, sure. and then the

the floor committees, have you like you talked about the example of the of clown worship, you know, like we're against clowns. Have you ever seen it where the floor committee kind of like, turns it like reverses it and goes, well, we should explore clown worship or have have they done things like that? I will say this as a because that has happened to me in in the CNH district. I I submitted an overture to say

Martin Richard Noland (57:37)
⁓

Brian Yamabe (57:48)
all district gatherings should use the hymnal. And it turned into all, we should have a plethora of worship options at the district level. I was like, what happened to my overture? That was not, and I was like, I shouldn't have even brought it up because it wouldn't have, you like you almost don't want to bring things up if you're going to get turned into something so, you know, opposite of what you wanted. I'm just, that's the floor. I'm guessing it doesn't quite happen as major, you know, like as badly at the, at the synodical level, but I,

Martin Richard Noland (58:10)
Yeah

Brian Yamabe (58:17)
You know, I'm just questioning. It's just wondering.

Martin Richard Noland (58:20)
Yes,

yeah, so the this whole I mean I've I've had experiences like that at the synodical level and I thinking Where did they get that from? Yeah, and I looked so what I looked at was the resolutions that came from the floor committee and the overtures and They put a lot of stuff in there that wasn't in the original. I thought well, that's not really what a floor committee is supposed to do well here is

Brian Yamabe (58:26)
You

Okay.

Martin Richard Noland (58:48)
And I'm not picking on anybody in particular. Understand that. There's no criticism of an individual. We could do that privately over a beer, but not online. ⁓ So they really aren't supposed to do that, but it's up to the president in the synodical convention. He picks the people for the floor committees and it's

Brian Yamabe (58:57)
You

Martin Richard Noland (59:15)
his job to pick the people that are fair-minded, are knowledgeable, experienced in parliamentary procedure and all that stuff. ⁓ And sometimes he picks the wrong people. For whatever reason, I don't know. That can happen at the district level too. And they really shouldn't do that. I mean, you don't turn an overture on... Now, the convention can do that, right?

That's fair enough. for the floor committee to turn it on, that's not their job. Their job is to make it easier for the convention to read through and understand what the issues are. It's difficult writing a good overture. It takes years of practice, frankly.

And I've seen a lot. think just about all my overtures have gone down in flames. You know, I saw them going up for us. Oh, that's gonna and I Finally figured out and they all told me about this my friends Marty you write too much. It's way too long Nobody can understand what they used to complain about that and at the seminary too. Nobody understands what you're referring to

So you have to keep it simple, you have to keep it short. Sometimes you do have to go into details, but the better thing is to keep it as short and simple as possible. And my best advice on that is if you're writing an overture, have a teammate. Somebody who's had experience with this, maybe your own pastor if you're a layman, and your pastor has to go to district conventions. So he knows about this if he's been around for

At least, if he's been around six years, he's gone to at least two district conventions. He kind of knows what's going on. And pass it by him and tell him to edit it and do it broadly, I mean, with a red pen so that gets, so that the main issue.

What the delegates are considering now they can always amend it. That's their right they can amend it to death They can amend it so it goes opposite whatever you but if you keep it simple the floor committee will say We don't need to do anything with this one. They'll just pass it right through and that's That's the preferable thing so keep you know identify what the issue is that you're addressing

And some of them are simply commending people. So let's say you have a district president who is retiring and he served for 30 years on the district level at various offices. Well, it's a good thing to have a commendatory overture. And nobody's going to fight that or revise that. But still, you want to write it well. And even that, pass it by somebody saying, how does this look? How is a delegate going to read this?

Do I say anything that's embarrassing here? You don't want to do that. yeah, it's overtures. shouldn't, I mean, just because it's process, you shouldn't let me say, you know, I don't have any experience. Even the most inexperienced person has to start somewhere. I'm just saying, after you've written your overture, have a friend that knows a little bit about this in effect.

You could send it to Brian Yamabe because you've had a lot of you don't send it to me. I've got too much stuff like this already And and then they can give you I mean, I may not need any work, but you know, it always helps

Brian Yamabe (1:02:45)
You

Make sense. sense. Any closing words you have? Anything you want to think about we might talk about next or anything to wrap things up?

Martin Richard Noland (1:03:07)
Well, one thing we could talk about is people that come from other church bodies or people that are not really familiar with how we do things. It may seem strange to them that Lutherans have what we call a congregational polity. that, like I said at the beginning, it's a bottom-up. So congregations decide who gets to be their pastor. They own their own property. ⁓

They elect their delegates and through the congregations as a whole, they decide what they're going to do. And they tell their bishops, that's what they're called in other church bodies, they tell their bishops, you got to do this. A classic example in my lifetime was the big controversy with Seminix, where after the Senate had dealt with it for a couple of conventions, they told Jack Preuss, if any of those district presidents

Ordain another Seminex candidate you are to remove them from office Absolutely, so there was no it was no no wiggle room there jack said ⁓ I've got to do this and he talked to the DPs and said now I didn't I didn't write this somebody else did the convention loves it I got to do it so don't go ordaining Seminex graduates because I have to remove you

And they say, you're bishop, you can do it. No, I'm not the bishop. I'm at the mercy of the Missouri Synod Convention. I have to do what they do. And I really don't want to get rid of you guys. He was a class. He was classy. But anyway, that's an example. And that means that the congregations as a corporate body, they rule the Synod. And for Lutherans, that's kind of a new thing.

⁓ So I think we'll talk about that in a future session. It's worth learning and understanding our church body that way. And that's even on the congregational level. ⁓ And then if we have time later, we could maybe guess at what some of the issues will be. Because I mentioned before that you can look at the district conventions and you see issues percolating through there, what was reported in the reporter. And then we can talk some of those things out, figure out what the issues might be,

and talk that back and forth. mean, I'm not going to second guess the convention, because almost every case the convention does a really good job. Sometimes I've questioned the wisdom, but sometimes they just didn't have all the information they needed, or they were rushed, or whatever. But generally, convention does a good job. And part of that is good preparation, which is what we're trying to help you with.

Brian Yamabe (1:05:43)
Hahaha

All right, thank you, Dr. Nolan. It's been wonderful talking to you again. All right, bye-bye.

Martin Richard Noland (1:05:58)
Yes, good talking to you, Brian.

Bye-bye.