# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1989_S71
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

-—/w Ye SC Oo Oo

ro

— ts

REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 7

opportunities in this convention to praise God for their gifts
and guidance. They have helped us to be a doctrinally
strong church, interested in growth and mission, caring
about the needs of others, seeking to do God’s will, and
especially dedicated to telling everyone what He has done.
I would like to close my report to this convention with
the same words used by Dr. C. F. W. Walther, the first
President of our beloved Synod, in concluding his synodical
address in the year 1850. Here are his words:
Let us now go to work in the name of the Lord. May God’s
Word, the sole judge of all controversies, also be our only judge

and guide. May the church of God be our witness. May the
glory of God and the salvation of the redeemed be our sole

objective. May the awareness of God’s presence, genuine and
pure brotherly love, unhypocritical humility, and inexhausti-
ble patience govern our every word. May the promise of God
to hear our prayer for light and wisdom and to grant success
to the upright in heart be our comfort. But let all bitterness
and obstinacy be far from us. Then Jesus Christ, the invisible
head of His church, will graciously be present with us and will
bring our work—which of course is not our, but His work—to
a glorious conclusion, and will soon turn our present sighs in
the midst of testing into joyful psalms of praise and thanks-
giving for His help.

So be it. Amen.

Ralph A. Bohlmann, President