1. What do we hope to accomplish?
It is the hope of those joining together in the association of congregations make public the official and tolerated errors of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in such a way that a productive discussion can be held within and around our Synod to address, correct and resolve those matters that are in dispute among us. This is done with a Christian, fraternal, and loving intent, to restore the unity of our Synod in its doctrine and its practice.
2. How do we propose to accomplish our goals?
First, it is our intention to make the errors within our Synod public through the publication of those errors in a letter to all LCMS congregations. Then, in connection with that letter, we will seek to bring about a group of congregations that intends to fraternally request that our Synod correct those identified errors so that the unity of doctrine and practice might be restored within our Synod.
3. Does this association of congregations intend to use the Synod’s appointed Dispute Resolution Process (DRP) to address the identified errors?
No. In fact one of the errors we hope to correct is to bring correction to the DRP process so that it actually addresses disputes on the basis of Holy Scripture and our Lutheran confessions rather than giving pre-eminent consideration to the man-made Constitution and Bylaws of the LCMS. Sadly, the DRP has been demonstrated over time to fail in its task to settle disputes and to provide redress to those seeking correction to errors either adopted by the Synod officially or tolerated due to lack of proper biblical ecclesiastical supervision within the Synod. We intend to openly, publicly, and honestly address the Synod regarding these errors in other venues than the DRP simply because the DRP does not work and because the errors are public and need to be dealt with publicly.
