Last Call for Convention Nominations! (by Pr. Charles Henrickson)

This Saturday, October 10, is the deadline for submitting nominations for the  various  officers, boards, and commissions to be elected at the convention in Houston.   Can you give this important matter an hour or two of your time between now and Saturday  and send in a nomination or three?    You need to look at a couple of pages of information  and fill out one form for each nominee and send it in.

Here  is information on  the Positions to Nominate. Note that varying numbers of positions are to be filled, in various categories, Ordained Ministers, Commissioned Ministers (e.g., teachers), and Laypersons.   Nominations are needed for the following positions:

Secretary
LCMS Board of Directors
Board for District and Congregational Services
Board for Mission Services
Board for Pastoral Education
Board for University Education
Commission on Theology and Church Relations
Concordia Publishing House Board of Directors
Lutheran Church Extension Fund Board of Directors
Boards of Regents for the colleges and universities (Ann Arbor, Austin, Bronxville, Irvine, Mequon, Portland, River Forest, St. Paul, Selma, Seward) and the seminaries (Fort Wayne, St. Louis)

Here is information on the Desired Qualifications for the various positions, along with the names of the current officeholders, when their terms expire, and whether they are ineligible for reelection (*) to those same positions.

Now there are two ways to approach coming up with names for nomination. One is from the perspective of the position, asking yourself, “Who do I know, or know about, that would be good for that position?” The other approach is from the persective of the people you know, or know about, asking yourself, “What position would that person be good for?” Look at this task from either perspective or both, and you should come up with some good names.

So then you fill out the official Nomination Form 2010, one for every person you nominate. You can print out the form and fill it in by hand; or you can fill it in on your computer, but then you need to print it out. Either way, you need to snail-mail it in. (To be safe, try to have your submission postmarked by this Saturday, October 10; they might accept some nominations submitted beyond that, but you can’t be sure.)

You will want to fill out the form as fully as you are able, ideally, with your nominee’s: address and phone number; home congregation and pastor; district; circuit counselor; experience, qualifications, skills, etc. For ordained and commissioned ministers, you can look up some of this information at the lcms.org Church Workers Directory. By the way, under “Classification,” you can click on a category and get all the names in the whole synod in that category, for example, all the Ordained Ministers. You can fairly quickly scan through that list and see which names jump out at you.

When you have filled out your nomination forms, then mail them in to the Committee for Convention Nominations, at the address given on the form. Remember, the deadline for submitting nominations is this Saturday, October 10.

Oh, one other thing: Even if the person you nominate doesn’t make it onto the ballot, that person you nominated is thereby automatically in the pool of names eligible for floor nominations in Houston, and that can end up being significant.

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