LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 91

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OTHER PRESENTATIONS

1. Address of President-Elect Barry

Dr. BohImann, my brother and co-worker in Jesus Christ,
delegates, members of the family of God and the family of
Missouri, grace and peace in Jesus Christ to each of you.

Earlier this year, I found myself reading through two
volumes that I have in my library and have not read for
quite some time, dealing with the history of our Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod. The one was a volume, A Cen-
tury of Grace, and the other was Zion on the Mississippi.
And, needless to say, as | read through these two volumes,
lonce again relearned a goodly amount of information con-
cerning the history of our church body—that there were
several reactions that went through my mind as I read
through these two volumes.

One reaction was, we really need to study history—both
U.S. and the LCMS history—much more frequently than
we do. The second reaction was, you know, God has been
fantastically good to our church body down through the
years. We do have a great and glorious church. But, then,
the third reaction also surfaced was that, if we havea great
and glorious church, we have even a greater and more.
glorious God, who year after year and day after day, has
poured out His blessings upon us as a church body as we
have moved through time into eternity. When you stop to
think of how He brought from Germany our forefathers to
this land in order that they might establish this great
church body here; when you stop to think how He has been
with us down through the years and how He has blessed
us in good days and bad, in tough days and excellent days;
when you stop to think that from a number of 707 Germans

who started in Germany towards the United States, He -

has built this church body to a church body of well overi2
. million people (not to mention all of those who have died
and gone on before to worship in life everlasting), when
you stop to think of all of those blessings that God has

poured out upon this our beloved church, we as individuals :

and pastors and laypeople and the congregations and Dis-
tricts of this church have every reason, boldly and mightily,

. to thank and praise God for Missouri.
I would have to tell you also that, as | read through

these volumes, there was one more reaction that surfaced ©

in my mind. Even though our early forefathers did not have
in their hymnal the hymn by Kitchin, “Lift’ High the
Cross”—as you find yourself reading through the history

of Missouri; as you find yourself looking at her goals and .

her history and her future and all of those things; as you
see that of the annals of history unfolding before your eyes
and the history of our church body, you cannot help but
hear, as it were, “Lift high the cross, Missouri, the love of
Christ proclaim.” When it came to the pastors of our church
body down through the years, the message which they pro-
claimed to their people was: “Jesus Christ and Him cru-
cified, lifting high the cross.” When it came to the day
school, where literally hundreds of thousands of young
lives have been influenced down through the years, again
the message went high: “Lift high the cross.” And when
you find yourself moving into the pastoral ministry of our
brother pastors, those that they baptized and confirmed,

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the sick that they took care of, the dying they.ministered
to; when you take that entire picture and spread it before
your eyes, you see a God who has blessed our church body
so greatly that there is really no way—no human way—
that we could ever thank Him enough for it.

So, that sort of brings to the surface the question:
“What, then, about the future? What should be our goal
as we meet here and chart a course for this great church
body into the final years of this century and the century
that is to come? What should we want for Missouri?”

- It would be my contention that we would want to ask
God to give us the grace to walk in the footsteps of the
fathers who have led us and founded this great church
body; that we would ask God to give us the grace of achurch
body to commit and recommit and recommit, day after day,
ourselves to be the kind of church that has been handed
on to us by our grandfathers and our fathers; a church
body that was not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
because they know it is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone who believes; a church body that is in the Word,
even more and more in the Word than we have been in the
past, and is marked by being a “in the Wordness” people
of God; a church body that is not ashamed to be a confes-
sional church body in this day and age when sometimes

- confessional Lutheranism is looked down upon; a church

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body that is willing to be totally spent—totally spent—in
getting the Gospel of Jesus Christ out to the ends of the
world; a church body that places a very high priority on