Who May Read Scripture During Divine Services? Missouri Orders a Study.
Resolution 5-09A sends the question of lay and female readers of Scripture to a seminary faculty committee and the Council of Presidents, reporting before 2029.
Resolution 5-09A , which orders a study of who may read the Scripture lessons in public worship, turned out to be one of the most divisive floor debates of the whole convention. It passed on Wednesday afternoon with 67.22 percent, the second-lowest support any counted resolution has received all week, ahead of only the public-rebuke question in 10-01A. The underlying question of 5-09 is the proper service of women and laity in the church.
What the study orders
Presented by Rev. Ryan Wendt, the president of the Montana District, the resolution begins by urging congregations not to provoke or engage in needless controversy but to persuade one another solely by the word of God, and commends the CTCR’s existing documents on the lay reading of Scripture. The resolution’s working machinery is: the two seminary presidents are to appoint a committee of faculty members to offer a joint theological opinion on 1 Timothy 4:13 and related passages, on how those passages bear on the public reading of Scripture in congregational worship, and on who should attend to those readings. The Council of Presidents is to study and evaluate that opinion with CTCR input at its discretion, discuss it with the faculties at their annual joint meeting no later than 2028, and report conclusions no later than six months before the 2029 convention. Wendt told the delegates the open hearing had drawn a large number of speakers across a broad spectrum of views, which showed “significant confusion” surrounding the issue and underscored “just how timely and important” the study is.
The fight to add teeth
Rev. Brian Kachelmeier, a Texas pastoral delegate whom the same convention had just seated on the Concordia Irvine Board of Regents, moved his printed amendment to require that the report “make recommendations for action at the next Synod convention.” A study is good, he argued, but the Synod should strive for uniformity against “an irresponsibility in a variety of practices that is actually causing a disharmony in our common profession of the faith… especially as the resolutions and the whereases state, with the addition of women lay lectors.”
The floor refused to add any teeth to the resolution. Rev. Philip Zielinski of Ohio, who had argued the committee’s side in the AALC debate minutes before, warned that recommendations descending from the Council of Presidents and a seminary committee “might become immutable,” where overtures rising from congregations, circuit forums, and pastoral conferences keep the decision where it belongs. Rev. Matthew Stanic, an Atlantic District advisory delegate, said the amendment was “proposing things in search of a conclusion, which we have already drawn ourselves,” and the study itself puts the cart before the horse, since “even the seminaries who we are directing to study the issue have already concluded that laywomen may not read the lessons in public worship.” A fair hearing, he argued, is hard to give when the examiners have published their answer. The amendment failed on a voice vote.
Reading as service, reading as office
The debate on the resolution itself produced the afternoon’s starkest exchange. Alyssa Hahn, a lay delegate from Immanuel Lutheran Church in Haxtun, Colorado, described a small town where sports rule over everything, where the women of the congregation carry the volunteer load to the point of burnout while “the majority of the men in the church are not stepping up,” and where attendance has grown from 35 to 50 under a pastor whose leadership she praised. The children serve as acolytes, run the soundboard and the slides, and, “yes, reading scripture during the divine service,” which she defended as, “they are not teaching. They are reading.” A thirteen-year-old boy given responsibility, she added, now says he wants to become a pastor.
Rev. Karl Weber of Minnesota North, in his second appearance of the afternoon, answered her respectfully and completely. If reading the lessons is merely a function anyone may perform, he asked, “why not an articulate third grader?” Reading Scripture in the divine service, he argued, is the ministry of the word, teaching in the act of being read, and it “properly belongs to the pastoral office”; the contrary practice entered Western Christendom with Rome after Vatican II and entered the Synod by resolution in 1988. He aimed his sharpest point at the popular study Bible’s note on 1 Timothy 4:13, which his parishioners quote to him: where, he asked [paraphrased], is the Scripture interpreting Scripture in that note, where are the church fathers, where are the Lutheran fathers, do you hear the dog that did not bark? If the pastor has laryngitis, the male elders assist him.
The closest vote of the convention
The counted drama came on an amendment from Rev. Dr. Matthew Borrasso, a Southeastern District pastoral delegate. He moved to add that the study produce “study materials for use at synodwide theological convocations, such as circuit forums and district gatherings.” His argument went to who owns the conversation: he was grateful the Council of Presidents, the faculties, and the CTCR would weigh in, “but just because they speak with the church, that should not imply they speak for the church.” Quoting Martin Franzmann, whose hymns the convention had sung that afternoon, he warned against “parasitic thinking,” which Franzmann glossed as thinking with other people’s brains, and asked that the whole Synod be equipped to do what the resolution’s first resolve asks: persuade one another solely by the word of God. After a point of order about production costs, which the chair waved off with thanks for the penny-pinching, the amendment passed 50.96 to 49.04, the closest counted vote of the entire convention to date: whether the laity would be given the study materials to argue the question themselves came down to a margin of under two points.
The rest of the debate compressed against the orders of the day. Rev. Jamie Holt of Northern Illinois spoke against the resolution from inside the status quo: his congregation permits lay reading “carefully and sensitively” under the 1989 resolution that left such decisions “in the area of Christian judgment,” and he is “not looking forward to binding their consciences,” though he allowed it would be “fascinating to live through” a study concluding the Synod had been wrong for decades. Stefan Gramenz, an Atlantic District pastoral delegate, answered for the resolution with disarming simplicity: two “eminently capable laymen” will lead Matins for him this Sunday, the floor-committee room on Saturday had held tension “quite palpable,” and a resolution that says the Synod should “read the word of God, talk about it, and then proceed accordingly” deserved a yes from anyone in favor of both reading the Bible and speaking about it. A final amendment from Dr. Timothy Summerer, an Atlantic District lay delegate, would have struck the study machinery entirely; it died at the orders of the day, its mover never given the floor to explain it, and the Kangas whereas amendment printed in Wednesday’s Today’s Business was never moved at all. The main motion then carried 67.22 to 32.78.
Suspicion abounds
The no votes were a coalition of opposites, which is what makes the number remarkable. Hahn voted her congregation’s women and children; Holt voted the 1989 settlement and the consciences of congregations that have relied on it; Stanic’s objection, though he cast it against an amendment, indicts the study itself, examiners who have already published their conclusion. On the other side, the yeses divide just as cleanly between delegates like Gramentz, who expect the study to vindicate lay reading, and delegates like Weber and Kachelmeier, who expect it to end the practice, or at least to end it for women. Everyone voted on the same suspicion, that the study’s conclusion is already written, and they disagreed only about what it says. The report is due six months before the 2029 convention, which means the female-lectors question, deferred by study in 2026, arrives in 2029 with a joint faculty opinion attached and, thanks to the closest vote of this convention, study materials in the hands of every circuit forum that wants to argue about it first.
Method and source. The account of the debate and the quotations from the floor are transcribed from the convention proceedings of the Wednesday, July 22, 2026 afternoon session; vote figures are as transcribed and remain provisional until the official minutes and the Resolution Action Report are published. Speakers are identified against the registered-delegates roster of the 2026 Convention Workbook (Wendt, Kachelmeier, Zielinski, Hahn, Weber, Borrasso, Holt); Matthew Stanic, Stefan Gramentz, and Timothy Summerer do not appear in the printed roster, whose changes are published only in the Proceedings, and are named as they identified themselves on the floor. The disposition is recorded on this publication’s decisions log , with the text of Resolution 5-09A from Today’s Business.
Ad Crucem News is an independent publication; this analysis is editorial and carries no imprimatur of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod or its officers.
I’m watching the ACELC conference on “The Order of Creation.” It’s helping me to understand why I have never been comfortable with the women readers in the Divine service. 🥴
I agree with Mrs. Hahn, that the men of the church are not stepping up and that truly is a shame upon men. However, I don't think that overrides 1 Timothy 4:13. Paul clearly tells Timothy that he is to devote himself the public reading of Scripture. He doesn't say assign someone else to do that job.