From Pastor Biar’s Pen 

It’s Convention Season

Later this month, we’ll have a (brief) congregational meeting in order to cast votes for the Synodical president, vice president, and regional vice president. This can only mean one thing: convention season is ahead of us. The presidential election takes place in early June, the rest of the convention – when the overtures will be voted upon – happens in mid-July.

As always, convention season invites us to remember what it means to be a synod – a word we don’t really use in everyday language unless we’re specifically talking about what kind of Lutheran we are. Essentially, “synod” means “walking together.” As a whole, we are a collection of congregations who have agreed to join in fellowship with one another, submitting to equal leadership and sharing in a common confession in order to pool resources, support one another, and uphold and maintain shared resources such as our school and university system, our publishing house, and seminaries which produce pastors and deaconesses who are held to the confessional standards of the Book of Concord. And while, as a congregation in Northern Nevada, we may feel isolated from the rest of our LC-MS brothers and sisters, convention season reminds us that we are part of the grander picture, that our delegation votes matter just as much as those coming from Missouri, and we all have our own unique roles to play within the Church.

And while the votes and decisions that will occur over the next few months will impact and shape the trajectory of the synod as a whole for the next three years, there’s also a certain comfort that comes in the synodical hierarchy as opposed to an entirely top-down model – an insulation against any drastic changes that may occur, because at the end of the day, St. John’s of Fallon will remain St. John’s under my leadership as your pastor. And I don’t change easily.

This is, of course, not to say that these things don’t matter. We should all pray for wisdom over the proceedings that are about to happen as well as giving thanks to God that He continues to maintain the LC-MS as the largest confessional Lutheran body in America. If you’d like to research the candidates, there is a listing of their names in the narthex, and we have biographies available for them which we can e-mail to you upon request. Though only the delegates get to vote on the overtures, I can show you how to access them as well. 

God’s Blessings,
Pastor Biar

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