LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1967, Page 73

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THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY 73

News in Christ. The Good News is proclaimed in apos-
tolic fashion when the testimony of the lips is confirmed
by the action of the heart. The apostolic church never
forgets that people are people, bewildered, confused,
lost without Christ. The apostolic church never forgets
that people are people, with bodies as well as souls.
Their bodies are redeemed as well as their souls. There-
fore the apostolic church cannot close its eyes to the
cries of poor and needy people. God the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ is also the God of the prophets, the
defender of the fatherless and the widow. As St. Paul
did not let the Gentiles forget the poor at Jerusalem, to
alleviate their distress, so the apostolic church cannot
forget the poor today anywhere in the world.

And Lives the Gospel

It is apostolic to proclaim the Gospel and to live
the Gospel. Unless the church proclaims the Good News
in Christ, it will not be apostolic. Unless the church
lives the life in Christ, it will not be apostolic. The
church needs to proclaim the Gospel and to practice the
Gospel not only to preserve its existence but its integ-
rity as well. If you hide your light under a bushel, said
Christ, the light will go out. If you put it on a candle-
stick and put it out there where people can see it, it will
burn brightly.

No Discrimination

In their outreach with the Gospel the apostles did
not distinguish between Jews and Gentiles. Jewish
people constituted a large proportion of the apostolic
church. You know what difficulties occurred when the
Gentiles finally began to come to the brightness of the
rising of Christ. Paul helped the other apostles to an
understanding of the universality of the Good News in
Christ, that it includes all. It still does. The time of
grace for the Gentiles is also the time of grace for
Israel. The time of grace for white people is also the
time of grace for black people or brown people or yellow
people. St.Paul says: “God has concluded them all in
unbelief that He might have mercy on all.”

In the church apostolic there is no discrimination on
the basis of race, color or national origin. When we
assert our confidence in one holy catholic and apostolic
church, we admonish one another not to become so
absorbed in ourselves that we forget others, so absorbed
in church work that we have no more time for the work
of the church. We tell ourselves that the whole people
of God are members of the body of Christ, and all must
be engaged in the apostolic mission. We remind our-
selves that Christ is Savior and Lord and that, follow-
ing Him, we are to bear His disgrace though that mis-
sion take us “outside the walls.” The mission of the
apostolic church is to the whole world and not just to
a select few.

Requisites
The church is truly apostolic when evangelism be-

" comes not just a program but a characteristic of the

church; the mission of the church not merely an enter-

- prise but the life of the church; teaching not merely

a recital of facts but a transmission of the faith so that

both young and old may know, believe, live the Gospel;
training of pastors and teachers not merely preparation
for a profession but equipping of young men and women
to be Christ’s men and women both personally and pro-
fessionally.

Congregations in apostolic times were manageable
units in a certain place or locality. They were not
independent units but interdependent with others in the
same locality and in other places. They were not identi-
cal copies of one another, nor did they all have the
same problems, but they were faithful followers of
Jesus Christ.

Forms Differ

The pattern is apostolic, though the form may be
different today. The pattern may apply to synods and
church bodies as well as to congregations, but it is not
the purpose of this paper to discuss church policy or
polity. It is the purpose to point out what must be the
business of congregations and church bodies: to get
rid of the cultural rubbish that always collects around
the life of the church if we are to be the church as it
was meant to be — truly apostolic.

New forms may develop in the future for preaching
and teaching, in congregational life and in the schools
of the church, but the church must always remain
apostolic. In the last analysis this means that the church
must maintain its fidelity to the apostolic Word and way,
the apostolic message and the apostolic mission. At the
heart of it all is the apostolic Word. The church apostolic
cannot lose the apostolic Word of Christ, Lord and
Savior, declared by the resurrection from the dead to
be the Son of God with power.

Wallace E. Fisher in his From Tradition to Mission
describes how he set about renewing his tradition-bound
parish: “Pastors and laymen must come before the
tribunal of Biblical evidence and, wrestling with that
evidence, allow the Holy Spirit to fashion an authentic
image of ministry for them. The Word of God in its
healing and offense, grace and judgment, gospel and law
is the essential and informing strength and substance
of authentic ministry. The particular forms which that
ministry employs will vary from culture to culture, and
from congregation to congregation, but the transforming
power of authentic ministry resides in the Word con-
fronting persons through persons. We concluded, there-
fore, that the quest must begin not with past or current
practices of the ‘profession’ but with the Scriptures’
witness to the living Word.” (From Tradition to Mission,
pp. 40—41)

Credo

In the Nicene Creed, the confession of our church,
we say: “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic
church.” The first word, credo, is important — “I be-
lieve.” Christ may be invisible to the world, but He is
visible to faith. The church may be invisible to the
world, but it is discernible to faith. The big question
that faces us in the 20th century is this: Is our faith
of such a nature that the oneness, holiness, catholicity,
and apostolicity of the church is discernible to us?

Oswatp C. HorrMANN