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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 8

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

8 MISSIONS

Reading the report on the Middle East, however, changes
the picture: the objective of the Middle East Lutheran
Ministry is to provide help to existing churches (primarily
in their outreach to the Muslims), not to establish an
organized church of its own (hence no mission stations).
The Middle East report also shows the extent to which
the MELM is fulfilling its goal of mass-media witnessing
to nominal Christians and non-Christians: the total en-
rollment in their Bible correspondence courses now
exceeds 50,000! The absence of recent statistics for Cuba
and for war-torn Nigeria perhaps makes us aware of the
frailty of all statistics. The accounting of men’s souls
is subject to all the limitations of man’s imperfect knowl-
edge. Truly, God alone knows the number and the names
of those people who are His epistles of grace to those
around them—in Cuba, in Nigeria, or in any land. The
absence of Cuban and Nigerian statistics is surely, too,
a reminder to pray for fellow Christians in those lands
where the path of faith is so difficult.

B. And Each Heard in His Own Tongue:
Using Different Means to Reach Different People

Mission has only one heart but many faces. There
is one Word that impels it, but that Word expresses
itself in many ways and always in response to the needs
of man where he is. A look at the diversification in the
tasks of Missouri Synod overseas missionary personnel,
clergy and lay, gives some idea of the variety of ways
in which these “words,” or “letters,” of God are in-
volved in proclaiming the Gospel to men of various
cultures and subcultures:

183 Ordained Clergy

139 evangelistic (12 heavily in
linguistics)
17 theological training
5 mass communications
5 seconded (1 LALC [Latin
Am. Luth. Council],
2 LWF Mass Comm.,
2 Islam in Africa)

4 lay training

4 presidents/chairmen

2 literature production

2 houseparents

2 evangelism and
stewardship

1 deaf worker

1 English pastor

1 mission secretary

168 Nonclergy

34 teachers 4 evangelistic

24 nurses 4 education administrators
21 POPV 3 agriculturalists
17 Hong Kong International 2 teacher training
School 2 paramedical
13 care of missionary 2 linguistics
children 1 secretary
12 lay workers, builders, 1 youth director
etc. 1 printer

1 dentist
1 social worker

10 business managers
10 medical doctors
5 mass communications

This tabulation of official overseas missionary per-
sonnel gives, once again, only a bare outline of the many
ways in which nations and subcultures in this post-Babel

world are hearing the Good Word, ‘each in their own
tongue.’”’ National workers and all of the baptized in
each country are also God’s words, or letters, engaged
in expressing His great Word of love to different people
in different ways.

One of the most marvelous examples of the whole
people of God in a particular place seeking to com-
municate the Gospel to “each in his own tongue” is
now occurring in Guadalajara, Mexico. Through sensi-
tive seeing and listening, Lutheran Christians there
identified six distinct English-speaking subcultures in
Guadalajara, each with distinctive characteristics and
needs: paraplegics, American medical students attend-
ing the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, retired
U.S. career military veterans, affluent retired Ameri-
cans, the expatriate business community, teen-agers,
and children. The members of the tiny Lutheran congre-
gation also identified the extent to which the seven other
denominations present in Guadalajara were attempting
to meet the needs of these separate English-speaking
“worlds”: which subculture(s) each served; the strength
or weakness of Word and sacrament in each congrega-
tion; the members’ sense of mission: any congregational
specialization (youth work, etc.). Finally they identified
which members of their congregation ‘‘moved” in which
subculture. Individual Lutheran Christians in Guada-
lajara are now using their own unique gifts to proclaim
the Gospel relevantly in the particular subculture or
context for ministry within which God has placed them.
In addition, they have made plans to identify, equip, and
even ‘call’ other lay people to be a personal word of
God’s grace in the subcultures largely untouched by
Christian witness and ministry.

C. And Each Heard in His Own Tongue: World Areas

In this section we speak in more detail of the things
which have been happening in all the countries where
God has sent us into mission alongside fellow Christians.
In reading about each of the following world areas we
become more aware of the specific ways in which the
Gospel is being communicated today, so that ‘“‘each can
hear in his own tongue.” In some countries one partic-
ular means of communication seems to be most effective
(establishing schools in Hong Kong, for example, while
teaching English best meets needs in the Japanese situa-
tion); in other countries we become aware of a variety
of approaches for widely diverse subcultures; in almost
all the countries we notice the increasing utilization of
the mass media.

The first four countries reported on—India, New
Guinea, Japan, and Korea—are anniversary areas.

1. India: Each in His Own Tongue
a. A New Day. Seventy-five years ago the Missouri
Synod sent its first missionaries to India. From 1895
until the first World War their letters and reports spoke
lovingly of individual converts and made the people
who supported this work feel proudly possessive toward
a growing mission operation. The first World War saw