Road to convention: Overtures and reports

The Phoenix Convention Center is the site for the 69th Regular Convention of the LCMS, to be held July 18–23. (LCMS/Erik M. Lunsford)

By John W. Sias

Rev. Dr. John W. Sias

The march toward convention continues. As I write, the Committee for Convention Nominations has just done its work of assembling slates for election to all offices other than the Praesidium and for all board and commission positions to be elected by the 69th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS).

Their work was limited by the nominations sent in before Oct. 18 — of which we did receive 25% more than last time!

The Synod president’s office tells me they are nearly done with the process of appointing floor committees, which will be charged to prepare resolutions for consideration by the convention and, likewise, are constrained by material received in overtures and reports by the end of February. These establish the business before the convention and give notice to the whole Synod of the matters to be worked on.

It is time to finish getting this important material in.

Overtures

An overture is simply a request for the convention to do something: to adjust the Bylaws or even Constitution of the Synod; to give some direction to the officers, boards, commissions or agencies (including districts and educational institutions) of the Synod for how they are to serve for or on behalf of the congregations; to initiate studies or projects; to set the triennial mission emphasis and priorities for the Synod; or to establish the position of the Synod on a matter.

Bylaw 3.1.6.2 limits who can submit an overture, but circuit forums (not winkels) and even individual member congregations are among those authorized.

Overtures have two common formats: one, the formal “whereas … resolved” style, and the other, a narrative rationale followed by the resolveds.

Detailed instructions and a template that is helpful both to you and to us are available at lcms.org/convention/overtures. If your circuit or congregation hopes for the Synod to take some position, take some action or study something within the next triennium, now is the time to get your idea in the business of the convention.

For the last convention, we received 290 overtures (not counting about 30 duplicates). We presently have just over a hundred. We have a way to go yet, if the convention is to have its hands filled with work to do.

The deadline to submit an overture for the 2026 convention is Feb. 28.

Reports

Reports are “statements of work performed or contemplated by those who are charged with conducting the business of the Synod between conventions” (Bylaw 3.1.6.1 [a]), including officers, the LCMS Board of Directors and certain other boards and commissions of the Synod, and a few others required or permitted to do so by the Bylaws, by action of a prior convention, or by the Synod president (Bylaw 3.1.6.1).

All these are governed by the convention — and the convention’s wise and fruitful governance of them depends on the convention’s delegates being informed as to the state of things. The Synod over the years has invested in and come to rely on a variety of offices and institutions, none of which turns on a dime.

The convention has great authority with respect to each of these — but also a great responsibility to understand as best it can, as it gives marching orders, what will be their consequence. The responsibility of those who operate these institutions and offices to write reports corresponds to this.

By the reports, the delegates are to be informed of the state of things and the assessment of what prior conventions have put in place.

Publication and review

When the convention floor committees meet in May, they will be required to address each overture received, either working it into a resolution for presentation to the convention or proposing that it be dealt with in a handful of other ways. Perhaps next month we’ll talk about that.

The floor committees will also be able to develop resolutions in response to the reports submitted — but what is not in an overture or a report will not be considered, so it is important to include everything that needs to be covered!

Before that time, overtures and reports received by the deadline will be published to the Synod in the Convention Workbook, to be available online and shipped to delegates by April 25. (We usually try to get it to the internet weeks before this deadline, as it tends to run close to 500 pages.)

Please keep an eye out for this book and plan time to engage with it, as everyone has opportunity to comment on its contents, by way of my office, to the floor committees assigned to deal with the material included. It is at the very least a great opportunity to see how those doing the work of the Synod and those preparing to evaluate and adjust it are thinking about those tasks.

And since it is all “in support of” and “on behalf of” congregations like yours (Bylaw 1.1.1), I’d suggest every congregation have someone engage with this material and foster discussion of what it means to be part of this Synod and how your congregation can contribute to governing the whole, that “the diversities of gifts should [indeed] be for the common profit” (1 Cor. 12:4–31; Constitution, Preface).

Much more detail about these two processes is available in the two noted reports, available at lcms.org/convention/national/publications.

President and vice-president nominations and president voter registration are still ongoing, until Feb. 18 and March 8, respectively; if your congregation does not have the necessary information, the president, pastor or administrator should contact us at lcmssecretary@lcms.org.

For information on actions your congregation can take part in now through the convention, see lcms.org/convention/governance/guide#phase4.

The Rev. Dr. John W. Sias serves as secretary of the LCMS.

Posted Jan. 27, 2026