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2018

Resolution of the 2015 General Convention of Synod

2015:0216 RESOLVED that Synod requests the CTICR to build on its earlier work regarding the ordination of women and men to develop a draft doctrinal statement for GPC and the 19th Convention of Synod that presents:

  • A theological basis for the ordination of women and men.
  • A theological basis for why the ordination of women and men need not be church divisive.
  • And that GCC resource it.

Outcomes

In fulfilment of this resolution the CTICR has prepared two documents:

  1. A Theological Basis for the Ordination of Women and Men – Draft Doctrinal Statement
  2. That the Ordination Issue Need Not Be Church Divisive.

20 April 2018

Dear 18th Synod delegates and members of the Lutheran Church of Australia

Over the last two and a half years the members of the LCA Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations (CTICR) have laboured long and hard to complete the request made of them by the 18th General Convention of Synod in 2015. The General Church Council (GCC) has received the results of their work, and is now ready to release the two documents to the LCA in advance of the July 2018 General Pastors Con ference in Hahndorf and the October 2018 19th General Convention of Synod in Sydney.

Along the pathway to completing its work on behalf of the Synod the CTICR consulted widely. It received substantial input from a range of sources. The members of the commission thank everyone who took part in the round of consultations, in which over 1000 people participated, and those who provided additional feedback to the initial draft. Because of this process, the final version of the Draft Doctrinal Statement is substantially different in structure and content to the consultation draft.

Ordinarily the Synod would receive the work of the CTICR through its report. This would delay the public release of the documents until August 2018. Since, however, 15 May is the closing date for proposals to the next General Convention, the GCC has authorised their earlier release to the LCA.

Principal Documents

In providing these two principal documents to the church, the CTICR has asked that they be accompanied by two supplementary documents, which it has prepared for the information and benefit of Synod delegates and members of the church.

Supplementary Documents

The background paper provides a more comprehensive biblical and theological rationale for the ordination of both women and men than can be provided in the brief draft doctrinal statement that Synod requested.

The other document interacts with the Draft Doctrinal Statement from the viewpoint of the LCA’s current teaching. The Draft Doctrinal Statement does not express the opinions of individual commission members. Rather, working together they have faithfully done the task the Synod set them, while internally the commission was engaged in a lively dialogue representing a diversity of opinions and beliefs on the matter.

The CTICR trusts that these supplementary documents will be useful to the church as it prepares for the upcoming Convention of Synod.

These two supplementary documents, along with the two principal documents, are available from the Documents column, left.

Your brother in Christ

Pastor John Henderson
LCA Bishop
on behalf of the General Church Council

 

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