The preface to the Ordination Rites, on page 510 of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer contains these sentences:

The persons who are chosen and recognized by the Church as being called by God to the ordained ministry are admitted to these sacred orders by solemn prayer and the laying on of episcopal hands. ... No persons are allowed to exercise the offices of bishop, priest, or deacon in this Church unless they are so ordained, or have already received such ordination with the laying on of hands by bishops who are themselves duly qualified to confer Holy Orders.

This requirement, in effect since 1662, will be temporarily set aside, so that all Lutheran pastors may be recognized as "fully authentic." This will "permit the full interchangeability and reciprocity of all its pastors as priests and presbyters within the Episcopal Church, without any further ordination or re-ordination or supplemental ordination."

An "Action of the Conference of [ELCA] Bishops" approved March 8 of this year stated this precept more simply: "The Episcopal Church accepts fully, and without reservation, present Lutheran pastors and bishops who are not in the historic episcopal succession."

The original Concordat specified that at future episcopal consecrations (also referred to as ordinations or installations) three Episcopal bishops would be present, passing on the historic episcopate. "Called to Common Mission" requires "at least three bishops sharing in the historic episcopate," thereby recognizing that some churches "of the Lutheran communion ... share in the historic episcopate."

While maintaining its term elections of bishops, the ELCA will, however, "revise its constitution so that all bishops, including those no longer active, may attend the meetings of the Conference of Bishops."

Both the Concordat and its successor document recognized that the Lutheran church has no order corresponding to the Episcopal diaconate. The March 8 action restates the principle: "[CCM ... contains:] no requirement that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America establish the office of deacon, nor that they be ordained" and "no requirement that the ELCA must eventually adopt the three-fold order of ministry."

The second paragraph of the text would seem to dispel the fears of some Lutherans and some Episcopalians that the two churches would become one, or that one would somehow subsume the other. It reads in part: "We ... understand full communion to be a relation between distinct churches in which each recognizes the other as a catholic and apostolic church holding the essentials of the Christian faith ... Neither church seeks to remake the other in its own image, but each is open to the gifts of the other ..."