The LCMS Convention Is Coming. We Built You a Reference.
374 overtures. 114 seats up for election. 653 nominated persons across two triennial cycles. It’s all in one place, cross-linked and tabbed, and it’s all free.
The 69th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) convenes this summer in Phoenix, and if you are a pastor, delegate, circuit counselor, lay officer, or simply a member of an LCMS congregation who wants to understand what is going in with your Synod and church, you have never had more information available to you, or a harder time making sense of it.
The 2026 Convention Workbook runs 559 pages. The election slates span seven senior-officer offices and twenty standing bodies. The overture docket encompasses ten floor committees and ranges from the mundane (standardizing vacancy pastor remuneration) to the genuinely significant (the future of the Specific Ministry Pastor program, eucharistic discipline, the structure of the Concordia University System, and whether the Synod President should be reclassified as a bishop). Most of this material is technically public. Practically none of it is navigable or digestible for a 21st-century audience.
That is the problem we set out to solve.
LCMS2026.ADCRUCEM.NEWS
The LCMS 2026 Convention Microsite, published by Ad Crucem News at lcms2026.adcrucem.news, is a structured, searchable, cross-referenced public reference for every substantive element of the 2026 convention. It is free to use, requires no account, and carries no paywall.
The underlying data model is built from the workbook itself: 374 overtures parsed into structured records, cross-referenced against the 279 overtures from 2023, every named person resolved to a consistent identity record, every submitting body tagged by type and district, every floor committee linked to the overtures assigned to it, and every board and commission seat tracked with its current membership and slate status.
What You Can Do With It
The site is designed around the actual use cases of the people most likely to need it.
Delegates preparing for the floor can browse all 374 overtures by floor committee, by submitting body type (district, congregation, circuit, board, or commission), or by filing district. You can filter by multiple criteria simultaneously, for instance, all overtures submitted by congregations assigned to Committee 5 (Theology and Church Relations) — and click through to the full WHEREAS-and-Resolved text with workbook page citation.
Those tracking the election cycle will find the senior-officer nomination slates compiled and analyzed: Harrison’s 900 nominations to the synod presidency represent 51% of all nominations cast for that office and a 566-nomination margin over his nearest competitor. The First Vice-President slate is organized with the full 21-name list and nomination counts. The five Regional Vice-President slates are shown with their regional totals. Across all twenty bodies, the site tracks which of the 114 seats have published slates and which are still pending, updated as Today’s Business documents arrive in May and June.
Those doing comparative research will appreciate the 2023 archive. Every 2023 overture is in the system. The Compare section lets you identify where the Synod has returned to the same ground it covered three years ago, often with the same language, sometimes with sharpened edges. Missing reports will be backfilled over time.
Feature inventory
Overtures — all 374, filterable by committee, submitter type, and district
Elections — senior officer slates with nomination counts; board and commission seat tracker
Compare — 2026 overtures cross-referenced against the 2023 record
Committees — all eight floor committees with assigned overtures
People — every named nominee and officer, with linked nominations and roles
Reports — workbook reports with a structured rubric for evaluation
Boards & Commissions — all 20 electing bodies, current rosters, and slate status
Districts — overture activity by district
Data export — (PENDING) structured download of the full overture dataset
Public API — (PENDING) REST endpoint for researchers and builders
Workbook downloads — links to official LCMS workbook documents
Articles — editorial analysis and commentary from Ad Crucem News
Does The Convention Matter?
The 2026 convention is not a routine triennial housekeeping session. The docket is unusually dense with substantive structural questions, and several of them are genuinely contested in ways the Synod has not seen for some time.
The pastoral formation debate alone has generated 88 overtures assigned to Committee 6. The range of positions is wide: from overtures demanding the suspension of the Specific Ministry Pastor program and affirmation of the residential seminary path as the exclusive route to ordination, to overtures calling for expanded online degree pathways, to efforts to expand, reform, or conclude the Pastoral Formation Committee itself. The floor will have no shortage of material to work through — and delegates will need to understand the landscape before they get there.
The Concordia University System governance question is similarly live. Committee 7 will receive the Board of Directors’ proposal to dissolve the CUS corporate entity and replace it with a commission, alongside overtures from the CUS Board itself pushing back. The post-mortem on Concordia Ann Arbor — proposed by the Michigan District — adds another dimension. These are not routine resolutions.
The ecclesiastical supervision docket (Committee 10) carries a cluster of overtures originating from congregations and circuits in the Southeastern District that are plainly the legislative output of specific pastoral disciplinary proceedings. Whatever one thinks of those proceedings, the overtures represent a serious attempt to reform the dispute resolution framework from the floor, and the convention will have to decide what to do with them.
And then there are the overtures that will attract broader attention simply by virtue of their subject matter: three overtures proposing to recognize Charlie Kirk as a Christian martyr, competing resolutions on IVF, overtures on woman suffrage in the church, and the proposal from two congregations to restore the Synod president’s election to the convention floor rather than the internet ballot.
The Synod’s floor deliberations are only as good as the preparation delegates bring to them. We built this site because we believe informed deliberation is worth investing in.
A Note on Independence
The microsite is published by Ad Crucem News. It is independent editorial coverage. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The data is sourced from official LCMS publications — the Convention Workbook, the official election slate releases, the Directory of Officers, Boards, and Commissions — and cited accordingly. Where we offer analysis and commentary, we say so. Where we present data, the sources are linked.
The Articles section at lcms2026.adcrucem.news/articles carries our editorial work on specific overtures, election dynamics, and doctrinal matters. That content reflects the confessional Lutheran perspective that has characterized Ad Crucem News since its founding. The data infrastructure is neutral; the editorial voice is not and we will be clear about the distinction at all times.
Ad Crucem News is a division of Arboradix LLC d/b/a Ad Crucem. Coverage of the LCMS 2026 convention is independent editorial work. Not affiliated with, endorsed, or authorized by The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.