LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 69

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REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT 69

2000, or just slightly beyond the world of today, the pop-
ulation of 5.4 billion will have grown to nearly 7 billion
people.

The blueprint reminds us that in 1978, there were 37
countries that had closed their doors to Christian mis-
sionaries. But today, one-third of the world’s area, with 65
percent of the population, has closed its doors to traditional
mission work. Those countries contain 83 percent of the
people in the world who have not yet confessed their faith
in Jesus Christ. This serious problem cannot be tackled by
the Christian church on earth with a kind of “business as
usual” approach.

Other factors are cited in the blueprint to remind us ‘of
the world in which we live. One that we don’t hear much
about is sometimes called “the persecution factor.” It is
estimated that almost 300,000 Christians will be killed
because of their faith in any one year. This reminds us of
Scripture’s warning that we wrestle not only against flesh
and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, and powers
of this dark world.

The blueprint sets before our church body 15 goals that
it believes we need to meet in order to do the task. Before
it does that, it reminds us that what it calls a “centrifugal
model,” that is, a movement toward the outside world,
must also be accompanied by a “centripetal model,” as the
people froin out there surround us in North America. The
report particularly calls for our attention to Africa and to
China, where the church continues to grow under restric-
tions, and to neighboring India, which together with
China, makes up approximately one-fourth of the entire
human family.

The challenge is also very great in other parts of Asia,
Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union. The world of.
Islam, which is especially resistant to the Word, again and
again these days offers new openings. In Latin America,
patient, evangelical mission witness among growing rural
and urban populations continues to bear fruit and give
promise of still more to come. We need to evangelize the
city. We need to have culture-specific ministries. We need
to see the United States as a world mission field, something
we're going to underscore on Sunday morning with our big
mission rally and the offerings that you and your people
are bringing to give new and dramatic and urgent appli-
cation to the task of telling everyone here in the United
States, a key world mission field. The implications of this
are very great for the recruitment and training of mission
personnel, theological education, the leadership and wit
ness in congregations and Districts and national organi-
zations of the Synod, networking, and fine-tuning the
structures of the church so that we're really geared toward
mission as our highest priority.

Funding is a major concern. We have a whole committee
(committee 4) looking at that question. We know that God
has given us the resources, but how do we spend it on our
priorities in our home congregations, communities, Dis-
tricts and our international operation in such a way that
we are really giving the highest priority to boldness i in
mission? There are many other emphases that you learn
about as you read the blueprint. I hope you'll do that, be-
cause so much of what we're trying to do in this church
body, and what we have been working at for many years,

has to do with this blueprint for building God’s kingdom
as His servants, and for doing 80 with boldness!

I mentioned a moment ago that we have had special
blessings in this triennium in our efforts to get to know
and become friendly Christian supporters of a number of
Lutheran churches in Eastern Europe. What a window of
opportunity is open! Only the Lord knows how long it will

‘be open. With the unbelievable, unexpected collapse of the

Communist system in most of the world in just this trien-
nium, a wall has come down! I will always cherish the
memory and the privilege of representing you and the won-
derful people of our church body in several key visits dur-
ing the last years. One was in October of 1988, to the little
town of Klitten, East Germany, down in the cornér, very
near Poland and Czechoslovakia.

That was the setting for the convention of our sister
church, known as the “Alt-Lutheraner,” the Old Lu-
‘therans, a very small group that had lived through Com-
munist oppression. Klitten had been set as the place for
this meeting three years before because the Communist
government of that area had scheduled the tearing down
of this old church built in 1847 (the same year, incidentally,
that our Synod was founded). By the way, it was from the
,Klitten area that many Wendish Lutherans came to the
United States in the 19th century, many of them settling
in the great state of Texas. But the church in Klitten had
not been torn down. Instead, the Communist government
collapsed. It was there that the church body voted itself
out of existence in order to become a part of the West
‘German partner church that we call SELK, or the Inde-

. pendent Evangelical Lutheran Church.

! A year later, because of the contacts we had made
‘through people like Wally Schulz of the Lutheran Lay-
men’s League, and David Daniel, professor of church his-
tory at the St. Louis seminary for many years, but now
‘serving in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, we made a visit on
‘behalf of the Synod to the bishops of Hungary and,Czecho-
slovakia, and then a few weeks later, Poland and Silesia.
(By the way, we have additional trips planned for this fall
to Romania, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states of Latvia,
‘Lithuania, and perhaps Estonia.) In every Eastern Euro-
pean country, we are being welcomed as the first emis-
saries of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod to these
churches. All we wanted, we said, was to learn to know
their story and to be helpful to them. I think many of you
know how God opened doors through those contacts and
‘many others by our Board of Mission Services. Today, and
‘for several months, we are supplying all of the Sunday
, school literature for 300 Sunday Schools in the Lutheran
‘congregations of Czechoslovakia. I personally consider it
yone of the high points of this convention that we are going
‘to receive greetings from the bishop of that church this
afternoon, a man who spent several years in prison because
‘of his conviction, and who today leads this church and
labors to help it be faithful to God. °

Eastern Europe—what an opportunity, what an open
‘door God has set before the Christian church on earth.
‘These people love and respect The Lutheran Church—Mis-
souri Synod because of our doctrine and our passion for
souls and our sound educational materials. And they cry
out and say, “Come over and help us!”