LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1967, Page 80

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80 REPORT ON LUTHERAN COUNCIL IN THE U.S.A.

predecessor agency. Now, however, that long-standing
function operates in a new organization, under a new
and much more public umbrella, and with a much
greater visibility to its financing.

Money is one of the ways by which important parts
of the story of the council can be told. Money is also
a subject of particular concern to a church body with
limited previous experience in conciliar organizations.
Money can be an important measurement of values but
needs to be used to measure only if used on the basis
of great understanding and background knowledge.
Otherwise it is unfair and inaccurate.

The Lutheran Council now carries on within its
budget services and activities for which The Lutheran
Church — Missouri Synod and its institutions and agen-
cies budgeted more than $215,000 in 1966. It is also
carrying on other services which The Lutheran Church
— Missouri Synod has long enjoyed but for which it has
not previously paid and in which its share could have
been well in excess of an additional $50,000 per year.
Such services are provided in the regional and state
studies regarding health and welfare, in the develop-
ment of programs in clinical pastoral education, in the
occasional use of the Office of Public Affairs, and in
the area of recruitment and scholarship where Missouri’s
substantial program was earlier funded outside the
synodical budget.

In the Regional Missions Planning Consultations the
Missouri Synod is now a full participant rather than
merely a guest.

Through the Washington office of the council, Mis-
souri Synod pastors and officials, Missouri Synod schools
and agencies are represented on the Washington scene
and kept informed about developments significant to
them. This is not a new service for Missouri, but now
it is provided by the Lutheran Council and paid through
the council budget.

The staff which the council makes available is pro-
ducing a new cohesiveness and sense of single purpose
for the activities and concerns which auxiliaries and
units of the Missouri Synod previously carried out
through the National Lutheran Commission on Scout-
ing and the God-Home-Country Award Program.

Lutheran Film Associates, producer of Martin Lu-
ther, Question 7, and A Time for Burning, and Lutheran
Immigration Service continue as instruments of The
Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, and, as a part of
the now unified office facilities and services of the
council, their cost is substantially reduced.

The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod has been
part of the Lutheran Service Commission and has con-
tributed substantially to the establishment and main-
tenance of service centers for military personnel since
the inception of that ministry in 1951. As a part of the
administrative responsibility of the Lutheran Council,
this function requires today one fourth of the staff which
it once employed in its separate existence.

So much for long-standing cooperative functions.

According to information available to us, the services
of the Lutheran Council have also made it possible for

’ the Missouri Synod to drop plans which it had otherwise
had for additional staffing. The savings to the Synod
in just those instances known to us approximates a
further $80,000 a year.

And finally, there is good reason to believe that The
Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod can effect. still
more savings after it has developed sufficient confidence
in the council and in the ability of the council to serve
the Synod well. At that point The Lutheran Church —
Missouri Synod may decide to delegate certain functions
entirely to the council without retaining duplicate staff
for them. If the Synod were to transfer all those func-
tions immediately, the additional saving might reach
$100,000.

And then, of course, there is the new work, the work
which has not heretofore been done. There is the theo-
logical confrontation and dialog which the Missouri
Synod has so long fought for and prayed for.

There is the coordination of research and study, a
monumental task truly worthy of a council. It marks
an attempt to support the best in the kind of study that
will not only test our past but also measure our future
as Lutherans.

This new work, of which only examples can be cited,
has its price. There is a cost to unity, even in its more
limited expressions or, perhaps I should say, particularly
in its more limited expressions, and the fact of cost
should not be surprising. Mission and education too
have their cost, and their cost is expected, yet they are
no more part of the given of the church than is God’s
gift of unity.

The ultimate value of the council will be in direct
proportion to the services demanded of it by the
churches. The council must of course prove itself worthy
of the confidence of the churches, but it will also be able
to prove itself only if the churches expect much of it
and invest much in it.

The existence and function of the Lutheran Council
in the United States of America is a dramatic and mean-
ingful development in American Lutheranism. But we
dare not make more of it than it is. It does not answer
any of the pressing questions regarding other relation-
ships within Christendom. Nor does it even within
Lutheranism provide for or acknowledge that unity
which is our Lord’s prayer for His church and gift to
His church. We cannot permit the mere existence of
the council, therefore, to camouflage our continued sep-
aration or to dull our hurt because of it.

On the other hand, within the council we dare not
permit ourselves to be satisfied with anything less than
the fullest promises envisioned by the planners of the
council: a maximum of cooperation, a minimum of
duplication and competition in financing and work, and
the achievement of theological consensus in a contin-
uing and systematic way. It is the potential for service
in these areas which prompts all of us who have asso-
ciated with the Lutheran Council to be grateful for our

relationship to the council and to be grateful for our
potential relationship in service to you.

C. THomas Spitz, Jr., General Secretary

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