# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S198
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

196 Reports on General Missions

part of hundreds of our clergy and thousands of our laity to these
Call of the Cross conferences, I quote from the Western District
Lutheran Witness supplement:

“They won't let us alone, these synodical officials of ours.
Hardly has the new year begun, when they again expect us to
attend special meetings for two days. All over the country these
meetings are being held. Pastors and laymen, men and women,
are expected to attend them. It’s the Call of the Cross again.
Emphasis is to be placed on soul-winning this time.

“Thank God for such leaders! Thank God that we have men
among us who have faith and courage, vision and zeal, and who
are ever bent on showing us the way! Our Church has great
responsibilities because of its many and great blessings. And it
has great opportunities to discharge these responsibilities, Our
country is full of unchurched people. Great dangers threaten our
land because of its many godless citizens. And so our Church has
a great duty to perform. It must spread the Gospel; it must send
out more missionaries; its members, each and every one of them,
must witness more for Christ and become personal soul-winners.”

Upon resolution of the synodical convention held in St. Louis
in 1938, the Call of the Cross Committee is carrying on. The
work is being done without hullabaloo and undue publicity.
There are no thronging multitudes, no screaming head-lines, no
boastful statistics. The Call of the Cross objectives must become
a permanent and ever-increasing endeavor on the part of our
people. By personal contact, by earnest prayer, and by the silent
appeal of the printed page, and primarily by the continued work
of the individual pastor, the ends are being reached.

The people to whom the Call of the Cross movement is pri-
marily directed are the laity. Upon them in the last analysis rests
the responsibility for the support and progress of the Church.
It is not altogether the fault of the laity that, especially in the
past decades, it has been too ready to shift its responsibility to
the shoulders of the clergy. ;

The Call of the Cross has for one of its indirect goals the
aim to bring back to our laity, in a world dedicated to materialism
and greed, the sense of missionary opportunity primarily in the
form of personal evangelism. .

Evangelism is faith in action. Evangelism is a thoroughly
Scriptural word, and there is no other word in the English lan-
guage that carries its precious significance. Down through the
centuries Christian witnesses have carried the evangel, the Gospel,
of the Lord Jesus to the ends of the earth. Evangelism is the
imparting of the good news of justification by faith in Christ Jesus