Bring LCMS Call Document Into This Century

Ordained call documents are unworthy of the Synod in 2024.

The LCMS Council of Presidents (COP) “ordained call document” must have seemed revolutionary by 1997 standards, but time and technology have progressed dramatically since then. The document and process violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

The current version has improved fractionally thanks to a partial online version, but here is a public copy of the previous instructions to illustrate the point. The content of the call document and its instructions are essentially unchanged.

It defies understanding that the primary administrative and procedural interface between congregations, their pastors, and their districts is shambolic. After all, LCMS Rosters and Statistics does an excellent job of gathering and presenting information online. Where is the continuity, cooperation, and collaboration?

Key Problems to Address

1. Diploma of Vocation
   The DoV is the saddest church document you may ever see, implying stagnation and decline. It is not worthy of a man called to the Office of Holy Ministry. Let’s turn it into a certificate worth the weight and value of the preaching office, which our pastors might be proud to hang in the offices!

   

2. Hosting
   Holybytes hosts the Call Document, built using the pre-Pharaonic FileMaker Pro platform. Rev. Dr. Lane Seitz is listed as the primary (only?) contact and provided a worthy service to Synod, but it urgently needs to be migrated to a modern web-based platform (free tip: start with Remix, Prisma, and MongoDB). It doesn’t need a lavish budget to be done well.

3. Supplement to the Diploma of Vocation
   The Supplement is a curious piece of backfill. Why not simply have a graphic-based one-pager that reinforces the scriptural and confessional requirements of the preaching office? It reads like an HR onboarding document balancing the differences between the Synod’s liberal and conservative factions. It could almost be as simple as this Venn diagram:

   

4. Superfluous information
   The Call Document is extreme hoarding in a digital format - a rats nest of passingly relevant and outdated inputs. At least half to two-thirds of the items can be eliminated. For example:

   1. Pull current and historical congregation, aggregate circuit, and aggregate district data from Rosters & Statistics (LCMS locator).

   2. Pull demographic, housing, economic, and climate data from any number of freely accessible third-party sources.

   3. Pull salary and benefit information directly from payroll providers and Concordia Plans (CP) and show it as a pro forma W2. If there is no prior payroll and CP engagement, have the congregation build a salary and benefits pay stub that includes Paid Time Off (PTO) with all supplementary benefits. The calling congregation should also expect and receive the pastor’s prior W2 to be fully informed.

   4. Require the attachment of three consecutive years of the congregations most recent financial statements that must always include (missing… red flag!):

      1. Chart of Accounts.

      2. Statement of Profit and Loss.

      3. Balance Sheet.

      4. Statement of Cash Flows.

5. Dos and Dont’s

   1. The section’s advice is awful if not downright dangerous. It is truly alarming that we form men in our seminaries and send them to their calls only to drape them in nonsense paternalism.

      1. “Do not negotiate the package” is ridiculous. Indeed, the entire call document has a purity standard for compensation and benefits that is impractical and detrimental, especially for young new pastors with a family to support. Negotiate! Changes to salary, housing, and benefits are not taboo topics! 99/100 pastors know perfectly well that they are not going to get rich in the OHM. Telling a calling congregation that you will struggle to feed and clothe your children does not make you a lover of money.

      2. “Do not have contingencies like selling a house.” This is almost criminally negiligent advice. America’s housing market has changed dramatically since the Boomers who created the document started their ministries. Housing ceased to be a straightforward and somewhat riskless transaction by the first housing bubble in the early 2000s. The situation is dire in most urban markets where LCMS pastors are increasingly shut out by their lack of earning power as the congregational death spiral accelerates. Pastors, you must not take on double mortgages or assume that a house in Moose Pasture, MN, will sell in ten days and buy you a family home in Beachfront Vista, CA.

      3. “Do not request a site visit at the congregation’s expense.” Sorry, but this is also nuts. A called pastor with a serious interest in a prospective congregation should always visit it, preferably with his family and more than once. The calling congregation should always facilitate and pay for the visits within reason (a week at the Four Seasons is off the table, as is a seedy motel…).

These are suggestions to be taken or discarded. However, the low enrollment at our seminaries and the manifold difficulties for an increasing percentage of congregations to get and keep pastors are furiously signaling that business-as-usual is not an option.

Let’s go, COP! Be urgent! Please, properly manage your household of shepherds even in the marginal things like a call document.