# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S58
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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PRESIDENT’S REPORT

BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN CHRIST:

If one of the Saxon immigrants who landed here at
New Orleans in 1839 could see this convention today,
144 years later, I dare say that he would never believe
his eyes. Could even the most hopeful and visionary
of our forefathers ever have believed that that little
band of 600 frightened and lonely people would ever
multiply into a church body of 3,000,000 souls, in 6,000
congregations, served by 7,000 pastors and 7,000 teach-
ers, in all 50 states, plus Canada, Argentina, and Brazil,
carrying on the Lord’s mission in 34 countries of the
world! Truly, we must begin this convention by re-
joicing in God’s mercy for 125 years of undeserved
and unexpected blessings, “Ever, Only, All for Thee” —
the theme that has been chosen for this 50th convention
of our church body —is indeed our only appropriate
response to God’s unspeakable goodness to our Synod.

The Big Picture

Yes, our church body has changed much since its
beginning more than 125 years ago. In fact, it has
grown so large and its operations have become so com-
plex that most of us can get only a limited picture of
our Synod. Quite naturally, each of us tends to see
our Synod from his own perspective and in terms of
his own interests and experiences. But it is important
for all of us to attempt to see the whole church body,
to view the many facets of its worldwide operation, to
attempt to appreciate the enormity of both its strength
and its weaknesses; in short, it is important for each
of you to attempt to see the Synod panoramically. One
of the genuine privileges of my office is the opportunity
to travel widely throughout our church, to talk with
the pastors, teachers, and laymen who make up our
church body all over the world — from New Guinea and
Africa, to the inner cities and farms of North America.
To have this experience of seeing our Synod in all of its
breadth and depth and complexity is to gain a new
appreciation of the fact that under God’s undeserved
blessings we have been and continue to be a great and
unique church body.

One of the chief functions of the President’s Report
to a synodical convention is to help the delegates to
share this panoramic vision of the church, to see more
clearly the big picture, to appreciate both our accom-
plishments and our challenges in the most critical areas
of our synodical existence. I invite you to look with me
at key aspects of The Lutheran Church — Missouri
Synod. What do we see?

I. We See a Church Committed to Evangelism
and Mission

When we look at The Lutheran Church — Missouri
Synod today, we see, first of all, a church body that is
serious in its desire to share Christ and His precious
Gospel with people all over the world. We see a church

59

committed to evangelism and missions, earnestly en-
deavoring to carry out our Lord’s great commission to
make disciples of all nations. I have been genuinely
pleased with the renewed interest in evangelism and
missions that have been demonstrated again and again
in the past few years throughout our church. It was
my privilege a few months ago to visit with many of
our missionaries around the world. I wish that all of
you could have that experience, and could see for your-
self the tremendous dedication and zeal of our brothers
and sisters in Jesus Christ, from the pastor in Hong
Kong working among refugees from Mainland China,
to the agricultural worker in India helping people feed
their bodies while he endeavors to feed their souls with
Jesus Christ, to the pastors and laymen all over the
world whose chief aim in life is to share the Gospel and
their new life in Christ with their fellowmen. During
the time allotted to Committee 1 on Missions, there will
be greetings from several of the presidents and rep-
resentatives of our overseas churches. We are blessed
with wonderful leaders in our sister churches through-
out the world, and some excellent work is being done.
Some of these churches are growing at the rate of bet-
ter than 10% per year, surely a most encouraging sign.
Truly, God has blessed our missionary and evangelistic
efforts.

But must we not also confess that our evangelism
and mission efforts have been too few and too feeble?
After 125 years of steady, continuous, and in some cases
astronomical growth, our church body in 1972 finally
joined the ranks of other main line denominations in
North America in recording for the first time in its his-
tory a loss in baptized membership. In our North and
South American Districts the loss was slightly over
3,000 baptized members, but if we count only the North
American Districts our loss in baptized membership was
nearly 7,000. However, our confirmed membership con-
tinued to increase, at the rate of 17,000 in 1972. The
reasons for this decline are to be traced primarily to
the catastrophic decline in the national birth rate. To
illustrate: One of our largest congregations graduated
60 children this past May from its parochial school, but
is expecting only 26 children to enter the kindergarten
in the fall. Although we have been able to organize
a new synodical Board of Evangelism, and have the
services of a fine executive and board members at both
the Synod and District level, the fact still remains that
we are falling behind in the area of evangelism. We
expressed wonderful hopes in our Evangelism Affirma-
tions in our 1971 convention in Milwaukee. We have
participated in the Key 73 effort. But our work of
evangelism has become increasingly difficult and needs
our dedicated attention and effort.

It is the hope of your President that the Synod in
this convention will not only discuss important resolu-
tions on evangelism, but that the congregations through-
out our church body will give top priority to this pri-