# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S612
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

612 PUBLICATION MATTERS

which says: “To the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree
concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of
the Sacraments” (Article VII of the Augsburg Confession). On the
contrary, our request is made to prevent us from becoming a people
whose heterogeneity will eventually endanger our unity of spirit
and invite the unfortunate development of dissension and love-
lessness within our midst.

In making our request, we think of Martin Luther’s words
of warning along these very lines. We are mindful, too, of state-
ments made in many church orders prepared by our Lutheran
forebears of past centuries in which it was stated repeatedly that,
unless the church continues conscientiously and faithfully to teach
her members and thus impress upon them not only the great truths
of the Bible and of the Catechism but also the meaning and import
of their heritage in corporate worship activities in the various areas
involved, the members of the church will become strangers to their
own heritage and eventually lose or reject it. Like our Lutheran
theology our heritage in Christian hymnody, liturgies, and church
music is a bearer, an interpreter, and a fruit of God’s precious
Word; those who reject, neglect, or scorn it are like the orchardist
who plants trees and nurtures them but who then either throws
away the wholesome fruits of these trees or permits them to rot
and decay. If we do not continually teach the meaning of our
worship heritage to our people, then this heritage will soon become
meaningless and dull to them; those who close their eyes, ears,
minds, and hearts to the great values and beauty of these gifts
of God to His church will then have the field to themselves and
thus, as has happened in various sects, create confusion and chaos
from which the church will later likely be rescued only with great
difficulty.

Serious worship problems confront virtually all church bodies
today. Such problems must be faced squarely and discussed in-
telligently by those who constitute a “chosen generation” whose

_ primary concern in its services of worship is not to please men,
but rather “to show forth the praises of Him who has called us
out of darkness into His marvelous light, which in time past were
not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not ob-
tained mercy, but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:9, 10).

That our people may understand and love our precious her-
itage, and that our worship be unto edifying, requires teaching
and instruction on all levels. It requires, too, that carefully written
materials be prepared by those who know and understand the
mind of the church in the various areas involved and who are
well acquainted with the worship heritage of the Lutheran Church

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