The 2026 LCMS Convention: A Statistical Report
All the numbers from two consecutive Synodical conventions in one place.
The document below is the statistical record of Phoenix, drawn from the official Proceedings of the 2023 Convention, the 2026 Convention, Today’s Business, the convention’s own credentials reports, and the transcripts of all eight business sessions.
The Synod that assembled in Phoenix is measurably smaller than the one that met in Milwaukee. Voting delegates fell from 1,023 to 951, and the congregational electorate that elects the President fell from 6,053 to 5,478.
The presidency has narrowed. Matthew Harrison won a fifth term in 2023 with 52.32 percent on the first ballot, and he won a sixth in 2026 with 50.1 percent on the third, a majority standing five votes past the halfway line of the 5,038 ballots cast.
The convention carried a heavier docket and finished it. Districts and congregations filed 374 overtures against 260 in 2023, the floor committees brought 112 resolutions against 101, and the convention acted on 98.2 percent of them where the 2023 convention managed 86.1.
The boards belong to the interior. Of the 66 elected seats that carry a home district, the Central Region holds 20 and the Great Plains 15, while the entire coastal East-Southeast holds 3. The Pacific Southwest District that hosted the convention holds one.
The confessional slate ran the table almost everywhere. Candidates named on The United List won 65 of the 73 seats filled, and the eight exceptions fall entirely within the Concordia universities and the Commission on Worship.
Incumbency tells two stories at once. Six of the eight officers elected in 2023 were returned in 2026, a retention of 75 percent, while the Concordia boards of regents returned 10 of 24, a retention of 42.
The record runs to ten sections, twenty charts, and sixteen tables, and it includes the full floor-amendment ledger of fifty-four motions transcribed from the session audio with mover, district, and outcome, which appears in no other published source. The official Proceedings of the 69th convention will arrive in months rather than weeks. When it arrives, it will be arranged by parliamentary sequence rather than by the questions a delegate actually asks. Consequently, we have arranged this one the other way, by committee, by office, by region, and by margin.
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