If I had to recommend a synod for a pastor, I would definitely favor the LCMS.
WELS is a tyrannical cult. The worst part of it is this - the defenestrated feel wrongly that they have been excluded from the Kingdom. The Kingdom of Satan, perhaps, but not the Kingdom of God. Consider it a divine favor.
The ELS is no better under Pope John the Malefactor's Reign of Terror. The ELS is really a franchise, like WELS, a franchise owned by a few families. Nothing is so bad that it will damn a pastor, if he is related to the right people. A seminary professor can bray about his affection for the most blatant false doctrine and yet be spared. The best pastor can be ousted by papal edict, by papal threats to the congregation. They do not like their rowboat tossed about by discussions of doctrine.
ELCA is a joke, except for those gaining power from the Lavender Mafia.
Missouri is apostate, as everyone knows, but there is more congregational autonomy than most people realize. More than one ELS or WELS pastor has found a soft landing in the LCMS ministry. Moreover, there are many circles within LCMS. Anyone can find a circle and join it, much like the Roman Catholic Church:
1. Those who worship Walther and Pieper, called Bronze Age Missourians.
2. Those in training for the Catholic priesthood, developing Marian piety and obsessing about clerical finery, incense, and exotic titles.
3. Baptist-Pentecostals, trained at Fuller Seminary or Willow Creek, fired up to transform their victims through Management by Objective, tacky marketing, and graphs (unless the offerings go south).
4. Those who adore every European theologian except Luther.
5. Luthean pastors.
All the synods are coming undone. People do not want to fund tyrants who try to create panic and then divert funds for themselves. Synodical doctrine is so deceitful that a seminary professor will critique Reformed doctrine in one classroom while another professor promotes it next door.
ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.