LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1986, Page 75

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REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 75

you and the other members of this Synod to open our hearts
to support the work of the Lord financially. Later in this
convention, for example, we will have opportunity to thank
God for the gifts of His people, in generous measure—now
over $50 million—for the Alive in Christ special appeal.
Our people do give.

God has given us resources to do the task. But if we are
to realize the opportunities God has given us, we must also
come to terms with some of our more serious problems. We
are on a “no growth” plateau, for example. To be sure, we
can point to a few numbers that grow each year, but ess-
sentially Missouri is not growing. We can point, in fact, to
the sorry fact that we continue to lose approximately
50,000 members each year through the back door. We've
begun to do some things to begin to counteract that, and
you folks are working hard at it. But we really need to
tackle that as a major problem and challenge for all of us.

We face the challenge of learning how to allocate our
financial resources in such a way as to accomplish all that
we want to do and need to do on local, district, and national
levels. And we need to work hard to develop greater trust
and respect for one another—in short, to let the mind of
Christ govern all that we do and attempt together in His
name. Missouri is very good at compiling laundry lists of
its problems. We've been doing it for years. We have prob-
lems, and we do need to address them, but without for-
getting the great strength and great resources God has
given us.

In order to help us do that and to move strongly and
boldly toward the exciting future God has given us in this
kairos, the Synod has been at work throughout the last
two years in various listening efforts and planning con-
ferences and councils in order to help this convention set
our direction and develop our plans for the future. Dr.
Merton Strommen, a distinguished research scholar and
a Lutheran of The American Lutheran Church, and his
company, Search Institute, have been working very closely
with us in this exciting attempt to plan what we are going
to do in the future in ways that are responsive to the people
of this church. Some of you remember how he told us at
the planning conference in February that ours is the first
major church body to attempt this on such a massive scale.
We are going to attempt to do it at this convention, and I
am excited about the possibility of that. When we are fin-
ished, we will have an understanding of who we are, what
we are about, and what we, the people, want the Synod to
do to strengthen the ministries of our congregations.

We will be spending some of our time together in “table
talks,” as we've called them, addressing a number of crit-
ical questions, not only to help guide the decisions of this
convention, but to provide input and data to our boards,
committees, districts, and congregations as we go back to
our homes and congregations to act for God in carrying out
the Great Commission. You will recall that Dr. Martin
Luther, whose table talks are well known to us, had a
practice of gathering students, professors, and others at
his family table, opening an issue and exploring various
points of view. At this convention we too will form discus-
sion groups, have Bible studies, address key issues, and
listen to each other in this way. This approach is very
typical of the broad-based listening and problem solving

our church body has been attempting more and more in
recent years, as we utilize survey instruments, listening
panels, and gatherings of cross-sections of our people.

Cross-sectioning, by the way, is the reason for assigned
seats. For the few occasions in the convention when we
use the “table talk” mode, we’ve employed a random-se-
lection seating process. Mr. Marvin Siebels and those who
handle registration matters have assigned seats so that in
the small groups you typically will have three voting lay-
men, three voting pastors, and two others “blue-badge”
staff positions or who serve as teachers or other advisory
delegates. Theoretically, there should be eight people from
different districts in each of the small groups. The profes-
sionals who have worked with us in designing this ap-
proach tell us that you will enjoy getting acquainted with
people from all over the Synod as you talk about the issues.

What we are trying here is something of a first for a
major church body. It will give us the possibility through
computers and data processing techniques to actually have
you tell the Synod, its boards, its commissions, and our
congregations some of the things you would like to see
people do to make your mission in the congregation
stronger.

There are some fantastic questions that you will be ad-
dressing! In Part II of my report (pages 25 and 26 of Today’s
Business) I called attention to some of the challenging
questions that we face in the future. Let me mention a few
of them. For example:

1. What are the implications for the witness and out-

reach of this Synod, of the fact that ours is becoming
a multigenerational, multicultural society whether
we talk about the major cities of our land, or its small
towns and rural communities?

2. What are the implications of the fact that experts are
projecting zero or even negative population growth
for our land, particularly inasmuch as our church
body’s pattern of accession is largely through births
and baptisms?

3. How do we witness to a predominantly elderly world
and learn to minister more effectively to and with
elderly persons?

4. How shall we provide for a truly representational
form of governance and direction in our life together
as a Synod? How do we provide more opportunities
for the involvement and ownership and representa-
tion of all of our people in the decision-making pro-
cesses of the church? How do we spend our dollars so
that all ministries at local, district, and national lev-
els are carried out in ways that truly reflect the prior-
ities of our people?

5. How can we enhance the mission and ministry of local
congregations and recognize in greater measure that
the work done at district, national or auxiliary levels
is done either in service to the congregations or on
behalf of the congregations?

6. How do we remain a confessional church in a time of
increasing doctrinal and ecclesiastical ambiguity?
How can we maintain Biblical and confessional faith-
fulness while combining it with a responsible open-
ness and flexibility to various kinds of inter-Christian
relationships?