LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1992, Page 94

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94 , OTHER PRESENTATIONS

(who have also served this convention); the Vice-Presi-
dents, and especially my friend, Augie, whom you have
honored by asking him to serve again, whose work and
mine have gone so well together, the entire Praesidium—
men of God—pastors of the church—we have come to care
deeply for each other in the care of the church that you
have asked us to carry out; the Council of Presidents; mem-
bers of the Board of Directors; the good staff people; pres-
idents of colleges and universities—all of you, for our
“partnership in the Gospel”—I thank you and I praise God
for all of you. I want to thank this convention for our part-
nership in the Gospel these days—for your laughter, for
your tears, for your hugs, and especially for your prayers—
for the ministry that you have given to Pat and me through
flowers (our room looks something like a funeral parlor,
but it smells great)}—for the cake that came to the room,
unsigned, with “Psalm 37” and “Ralph” written across the
top—that was our devotion one evening. There are so many
things I want to thank you for, but especially as I think
of “partnership in the Gospel,” 1 want to thank this con-
vention for enacting motion after motion which will put
into action so many of the goals and dreams and efforts of
these past 11 years. It seems to me that virtually all that
we have asked the church to do to move us forward in
mission, you have done with great enthusiasm and with
great care, and I am so grateful for that, that the church
goes forward because of our partnership in the Gospel.

There’s another plaque on my office wall, right above
the table where we sit 80 many times to chat about things.

And it, too, has a word of God in calligraphy, nicely done.-

It’s from Revelation, chapter 3, verse.8. May I read it?
“Behold, I have placed before you an open door which no
one can shut. I know that you have but little strength. Yet
you have kept My word and not denied My name.”

That passage was used by me as a text for a sermon,
and on another occasion for an evening devotion, at times
that were particularly meaningful. May I tell you about
them? The one was the sermon at the opening service of
Concordia Seminary in the fall of 1974, as we attempted,
with God’s help, to recover from a very difficult time and
to make a new beginning. These words marked the tears
and the prayers of that evening—how richly God blessed
that effort of the whole church to rebuild its seminary.

And then, in 1985, one evening as 12 of us were visiting
in the People’s Republic of China—in Guangzhou, the city
that we used to call Canton, the day before we met former
President Nixon, who had done so much to open doors in
China—these words were also the text for our meditation.
God's open door is there because we have kept His Word
and not denied His name! And we thought of all those
people there in China who during years of persecution and
difficulty have done just that. This passage became my
prayer and the prayer of many others, and I hope it’s yours
in this convention, too. I thought of it especially yesterday,
as I introduced to you President Benjamin Chung of our
Lutheran Church—Hong Kong Synod, because he was in
the room that evening. As we talked yesterday, through
the marvel of modern communication, to Missionary Henry
Rowold (who was also one of the leaders of that expedition,
as we visited with the officers of the Religious Affairs Bu-
reau, with other religious leaders, including the highest

ranking religious leader in China, Bishop Ding, and all
those many people), those words seemed to me to be apt _
words to lay on our hearts together in this convention. —

Because God has set before us, too, an open door that
no one can shut, simply because He opened it. It’s His door.
He has given us the resources to walk through it. Oh, I
would plead with you to run through it! Who knows when
doors can slam shut on us in China and Eastern Europe,
in the cities and the ghettos of this country, in those many,
many, many places where God is leading His church to
proclaim the name of Jesus Christ? ,

When we began this pastoral presidency in 1981, there
were three words that I used as “peg” words, as I have
called them, to help provide me and colleagues in the ad-
ministration with some kind of criteria as to what we really
want to do in all the daily tasks of the office. The first of
those three words was confession: We want to confess God’s
Word and Luther's doctrine pure, on the basis of our
Confessions, as this great church has done so boldly for so
long. 1 thank God that today the confessional position of
this church body is as strong as it has ever been, and |
thank and congratulate the pastors and teachers and lay
leaders of this church for that. Brothers and sisters, don’t
let the word confessional become the identity or the badge
of a church within a church. This church body, its doctrine,
its practice, is confessional. And I think we should thank
and praise God for that!

The second word was solidarity. It was kind of an “in”
word in those days, as Lech Walesa and others in Poland
struggled to find solidarity. It's a word that seemed to me
to be stronger than “unity,” it seemed to have more sta-
bility to it, more punch if you will. And I hoped then, and
I hope today, for the solidarity of The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod—that we can get over the “we/they” ap-
proach to questions, that the confession that God has be-
queathed to us of His love in Jesus Christ is something
that we will stand on solidly and stand on together.:

The third word was mission, from the very first until
today. And then came a few years when other “peg” words
occupied our attention, too. Growth: growth in our spiri-
tuality, and growth in numbers as we reach out to the
world. Relationships: working at relationships between
cultures, between men and women, and reminding our-
selves in this great church that God created male and fe-
male and placed all of us into the body of Christ, made all
of us a kingdom of priests with rights and privileges and
opportunities, that gender is not the primary consideration
in the service of God—a commitment that I must tell you
with all candor that I intend to pursue through the rest of
my days. . .

And then, I suppose, not to reminisce too long with you,
there are banners to my left that many of you saw in your
District conventions and have seen on other occasions.
They choked me up a bit when they were brought in Sun-
day morning, because the four vision words upon them
reflect so much of what this church body is attempting to
do. We are and want to be ever more a Gospel-based
church. We are a church that puts the message of Jesus
Christ into everything it does. It’s not just one doctrine
among many, ranked at the top of the list, but the Gospel
is like the heart and the circulation system of the human