congregations, with applications from three more and ten other congregations in fellowship. The LCR discussed church fellowship with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) in the 1960s, but finally decided, in July 1970, that the differences regarding the doctrine of church and ministry were divisive of church fellowship. In 1972, St. Matthew's in Detroit left the LCR because of what it saw as improper involvement of the LCR in the congregation's affairs. Four other congregations were removed from membership in 1973 because they sided with St. Matthew's. Three more congregations, including Rosomer's, left for the same reason in 1976. The Fellowship of Lutheran Congregations (FLC), is a group of congregations that left the LCR in 1979 after a dispute concerning the proper procedure of excommunication, namely, whether the person being excommunicated had to be present when the voters' assembly considered the question. The congregations of the FLC joined the Concordia Lutheran Conference in about 2004. For a time in the 1990s, the LCR was in official church fellowship with the Illinois Lutheran Conference (ILC). The ILC was organized in 1979 after three congregations left the WELS in protest after a pastor was suspended due to claims he made regarding the King James Version of the Bible. There was controversy between the ILC and the LCR regarding the "appearance of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22) and the doctrine of church and ministry. The LCR severed the fellowship because of differences discovered during the controversy over the "appearance of evil". In February 2006, five congregations and four pastors suspended church fellowship with the rest of the LCR when, in the wake of a disagreement regarding the doctrine of the ministry, an LCR congregation was dissolved through legal action by certain members, most of whom were female, who disagreed with their pastor. This led to accusations of female suffrage by one side and legalism by the other. The LCR was never asked by either side of the congregation to adjudicate the division. The congregations that suspended fellowship in February 2006 withdrew their membership from the LCR in April 2006 after a special convention called to address the controversy refused to discuss the matter of female suffrage and the aforementioned dissolution. A position paper titled The Ministry and Auxiliary Office with Respect to Legalism that was presented at that conference in an attempt to resolve the controversy has since been adopted unanimously by the remaining