Pastoral formation is an important matter to be addressed at the convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in July of this year. The Convention Workbook contains much material about it.
One of the issues is the hazard of infecting our synod with not only heterodox but heretical teaching through the injection of pastors trained at outside seminaries with weak programs and false teachers. Another is the effects of misusing the Specific Ministry Pastor program aside from its purpose. It is not designed for, and it is not capable of, forming pastors as an equal primary option to our seminaries for general ministry rather than specific ministry.
The Convention Workbook contains important reports on the work of our seminaries in St. Louis and Fort Wayne. It also contains special reports on unauthorized seminaries and the Specific Ministry Pastor program.
Unfortunately, the print reproduction of these reports in the workbook is only about two notches up from rendering them useless. Originally produced on standard letter sized paper, in the workbook, which also has standard letter sized pages, these reports are reduced four-to-one. Four pages of report are zoomed onto a single page. If the font in the original were 12 pt and readable, the reduction in the workbook is down to around 3 to 3.5 pts. Yes, with extra effort, a person can squint and read them. If you have one, you could do as I did, magnify the beady little lines with an olde 8-inch NewsNet proofing magnifier. But for most people, the teeny print size is so obscuring as to run the risk of relegating these vital reports to inattention. The convention would then act without assimilating the basis of its actions.
Accordingly, we here present three of the reports, having reset the type and reformatted the documents so that they are legible. Understand that these editions are unofficial, but we believe still useful. You may either view them online or download them using following links:
- Report R13.3 (2026), Report on Unapproved Programs Preparing for the Office of the Holy Ministry.
- Report R13.5 (2026), Policy Requirements for the Specific Ministry Program: Admissions, Administration, and Supervision
- Report R13.6 (2026), Report on the Development of a Comprehensive, Uniform, Synodwide Specific Ministry Supervision Plan
Please feel free to spread these around as far and wide as you feel could be beneficial.
Great appreciation is expressed to Kelly Smith for some beautiful work on text extraction from the workbook.
