CONSEQUENCES OF HOSANNA-TABOR

The unanimous decision that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) just handed down has far reaching consequences for religious liberty. While many have written how the case has probably settled the relationship between church organizations and civil governments, few have addressed the questions of how the opinion changes the relationship within a church organization.
The Supeme Court decision essentially concluded that disputes between a congregation and its pastors or other "ministers" must be decided within a process by the church body.
In Hosanna-Tabor the Missouri Synod argued that "church doctrine" required that the controversy between a LCMS congregation and it's commissioned minister must be resolved within the Synod's Dispute Resolution Process.
Fortunately, the majority of the Supreme Court did not depend on the availability of a the dispute resolution process within the church body. Only two justices gave any weight to the existence of this ecclesiastical procedure adopted by the Missouris Synod or to the position that compliance with its processes were required as "church doctrine"

However, the decision means that each Church organization will have to adopt some such procedure to settle employment disputes in the future. It will be up to each Church Body to decide whether the decisions will be made solely in the local congregation, or under the supervision or active participation of a regional or national church office.

But the truth is, congregations within the LCMS have already given up autonomous dispute resolution. The Synod has decided church disputes must be handled within the framework adopted by the Synod..
This process, outlined in our Handbook, requires the involvement of the District Office in every internal matter of each congregation where controversy exists.

The District has declared that its dispute resolution process is a church doctrine. Is it really "doctrine" that the District, not the local congregation, will be able to control the entire dispute resolution process, including who hears the dispute, what evidence shall be considered, as well as the time, place and conditions of hearings.

The system is ripe for abuse.

In cases where the District may have an interest, such as those involving real property or large amounts of money, a District may even engineer a dispute on its own, then force the "disputing parties" to resolve their differences within the process it controls.

It may well be time for pastors, commissioned ministers and all fair-minded laity to take another look at the format of the dispute resolution process. Is the involvement of the District President and his staff always a welcome development? May a congregation of the LCMS adopt a dispute resoution process of its own to preserve local autonomy? How do pastors and other "ministers" secure their rights stated in the congregation's Constitution, Bylaws and their Letter of Call? Can they be guaranteed impariality in a process controlled by a faction of a congregation hostile to his presence? Finally, how are fairness and impartiality to be preserved in cases where the District has a vested interest in the outcome of the dispute?