LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 66

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66 THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY

needs it, how strenuously he and his family have to
keep on clinging to it and using it.

The service of worship is not the only way that the
parish church keeps the Word of Christ moving. Schools
and classes for young and old, Bible classes and prayer
cells, interest groups and administrative committees,
sharing groups and sensitivity groups develop and
gather about the core of the parish. Most numerous
and important among them are the families, and Thurs-
day we shall give them special attention. In every one
of them people can speak the Word of God on to each
other and build each other’s faith and life through Jesus
Christ. Some of these units are simply officers at work;
ply your craft and do your business as the service which
Jesus would have you do. Some of these groups are
for sociability; don’t be ashamed to have a good time
with fellow Christians and to hallow your fellowship
with the Word of Christ.

These are great years in our parishes for reassessing
the work of Christian education. Our Synod is blessed
with a strong corps of professionally trained Christian
teachers assisted by a throng of volunteer workers. Join
in that restudy. For you are facing up to what your
business is. The question is not just whether to have
hot lunches or to launch graduates into high school
and college. The question is whether the boys and
girls in the church school are themselves church at
that moment, helping to build the faith and life of one
another in classroom and on playground together with
their teachers, and whether they are doing the same
for and with their parents when they get home, and
whether teachers and parents are a team not just in
getting Charlie through school but in getting Charlie
to be fruitful as a Christian and helpful in building
the faith of fellow students and teachers and parents.
It’s a hard and demanding task to build and operate
a school that serves that purpose.

The television age is highly conscious of boredom.
The program that bores people loses its sponsor. The
result is frenzied quest for novelty. Many a parish
is unsure whether it is going to be able to continue
with the same program of education, types of worship,
structures of work. Let’s not be confused into compar-
ing things that don’t belong in the same class. Worship,
school, friends, family can indeed be boring. But the
answer is not to discard them but to return the vitality
to them with which they began. Amusement has its
vitality because it is novel. The Christian church and
parish and family convey the life of God because of
the edifying Word. Are we really going to grant that
Jesus Christ, Savior, Healer, Helper, Friend, Brother,
bores us? Are we really only able to think of how
old and stale the words of worship and teaching are?
Or are we in them reminding one another of the Son
of God, who died for us and rose again to be with us
right now?

As I was writing the first draft of this address last
winter, astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders were
completing their epochal flight around the moon. How
happy we were that they had splashed down safely

and how grateful for the advance in human knowledge
which they made possible! Most- remarkable, how-
ever, was the fact which Colonel Borman on the York-
town and the congratulations of the President of the
United States stressed, that thousands of people had
contributed to this feat, not only at Cape Kennedy
and at Houston and in the South Pacific but back
through many generations; Colonel Borman paid tribute
to Sir Isaac Newton.

It struck me at the time that this was a great parable
for the Christian congregation as it goes about its
work. Its task is to send Christians into their homes
and out into their thousands of callings all over the
world to display God’s great acts in Jesus Christ. The
tool for the task is the Word of God. Different Chris-
tians have different tasks in the process, and they use
the help that has come down to them from many
generations of Christians in the past. All of them are
ministers and servants to one another to keep each
other’s faith and consecration strong. ;

How great if you can go back into that sort of
teamwork! It takes patience; it means making up for
mistakes; it involves frustration and tears. But how
wonderful it is! For the Christian in the world is not
simply an astronaut exploring an inhospitable moon
and getting back safely. He is a helper and a sower,
bearing precious seed that the world may come to life
for God through Jesus Christ, whom He sent to save
us and to lead us.

Ii

The Word of God
Builds Christians Everywhere
Lesson: Puitipprans 1:3-11

You and I are agents in the plan of God for keeping
His people fed and sending them to be about His busi-
ness. What a tremendous task, to direct the Word
and action of God into people’s hearts by which their
faith and life is salvaged and built up day by day!
How wonderful, we said yesterday, to see a Christian
congregation working as a team to send its people
out into the world, fed with the lifestream of God
Himself, for their tasks of witness and service!

But a disquieting thought gnaws at our minds. It’s
hard enough to help an individual group of Christians
work together in that team spirit. What then can
you do to help six thousand congregations work to-
gether, the six thousand which are represented in
this room? A thousand delegates can get the idea and
catch fire for great plans. What do you do to help
millions of Christians think together with one mind?

In this convention we talk about even more than
six thousand congregations. We are thinking of many
times that number. What do you do to work in unity
with Christians all over the world?

A

It isn’t easy. Nineteen hundred years ago the small
and poor congregation at Corinth, which had been
founded by St. Paul himself, was riddled with disunity