Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 34
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 34

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

34 MISSIONS

plined listening and through dialog with the people to
whom he was sent he came to understand what “made
them tick.” He came to realize that the Greeks were
very unsure of themselves in religious matters. Though
they had erected a temple to each and every god they
had ever heard of—as a kind of spiritual disaster in-
surance, they felt only “half safe.” In their fear that they
might either have overlooked one of the full set of gods
or—heaven forbid! —the one’ true God, they had erected
one additional temple that had no designation. Even
this action did not give them comfort or security. Having
come to know their anxiety, Paul was able by the Spirit
to preach Jesus Christ relevantly and effectively: “I per-
ceive that you have erected a temple to the unknown
God. Let me tell you who He is.”

d. Glass Cleaners of the “Now Generation.” Two
years ago the California and Nevada District called Rev.
Willie Herzfeld as its urban minister. Pastor Herzfeld,
black, established his base of operations in Oakland,
which has the largest proportion of black people in its
population among all cities west of the Mississippi.
Shortly after his arrival, Pastor Herzfeld walked to a
playground on which a group of teen-agers were playing
softball. Out of his desire to establish communication
with them, he asked whether he could play ball with
them. No response. He asked again. No response. He
asked again. No response. Rev. Herzfeld then tried
another approach. Noting that the kids were having
the normal squabbles, he volunteered to umpire for
them. Not only did the teen-agers say nothing, but if
looks could kill, Rev. Herzfeld would be no more. Feeling
incapable of overcoming their hostility and rejection,
he began to walk away. After he had walked a hundred
feet or so, a teen-ager called out in an authoritative
voice, “OK, preach, you can play.” Though the speaker
didn’t say it out loud, his yell carried with it the un-
mistakable message that “it’s our decision, not yours,
as to whether you will play and under what conditions.”

To those entrapped in an urban ghetto the church
has all too often imposed its own rules, cracked the whip,
set itself up as the umpire. Though such a style has
surely not been intentional, the church has often acted —
and therefore has been seen by the very people it has
been sent to minister to—as just another paternalistic
force seeking to have its own way for its own sake. And
the free course of the Gospel cannot happen except
through disciplined listening and through the process
of renewal and the relevant announcement and acting
out of the Gospel faithful to what has been heard, felt,
and experienced “‘out there.”

Four years ago the South Dakota District, in team
with the synodical Board for Missions, called Rev.
W. Walter Weber as our National Indian Ministry Con-
sultant. His mission was and is to perceive the Indian
condition in all its ramifications, to test out approaches
by which the Gospel can be effectively communicated
to the “first Americans,” and to share both insights and
approaches with the rest of us. If ever there were a peo-
ple who had valid cause to look upon the church as an

(if not the) oppressor, it is the American Indian. Are you
aware of the fact—as many Indian people are —that the
federal government for more than 25 years subsidized
the vast majority of Christian missionaries serving the
Indians? The motive? By ‘“Christianizing” the Indians
it was assumed and hoped that they might finally and
permanently become pacified, at much less cost to the
nation than the continued presence of U.S. cavalry units
throughout the West. If you were an American Indian,
the willing acceptance by the church of its role as agent
of the government would have a profound effect on your
receptivity to the witness of the church.

Such listening—and the example offered is just one
of many ~is vitally necessary if there is to be true and
genuine communication between the church and Indian
people.

A third example. Though the so-called English lan-
guage is the dominant tongue in America, there is a great
and bewildering array of private languages in use in our
country. The tremendous increase in man’s knowledge
about the universe, the increasingly complex technology
in a highly diverse and sophisticated society, and the
need of people to fight against being a mere number or
unit in a world that insists on conformity ~—all leads to
great communications barriers that are partially revealed
in language. Consider but a few simple illustrations. To
“project’’ means (1) to a speech instructor: to throw one’s
voice; (2) to a psychologist: to place the blame or fault
for a happening or failure on someone other than one-
self; (3) to a movie operator: to cause a filmed picture
to transmit itself by light to a screen. In the vocabulary of
a Christian, to “put on” means to take on by grace
through faith a whole new identity, becoming a child
of God. In contrast, in America today “put on” means to
fake it, to play a game, to be phony, to kid or tease. Per-
ceiving the meaning of a given word ina given situation
is difficult enough. But when, as in America currently,
the differential use of words is merely symptomatic of
the fact that there are wholly new languages in use
among us, the conditions are quite like those at the
Tower of Babel.

We have long been accustomed to enabling our over-
seas missionaries as well as those who serve immigrant
groups with non-English backgrounds to master the cul-
ture and language so that they can communicate with the
people to whom they are sent. In modern America the
need is at least as great to do the same for those called
to serve in many exceptional settings. And so, for ex-
ample, a seminary student recently spent 3 weeks at a
motorcycle mechanics’ school so that he might learn the
language essential to his speaking and acting the Gospel
among cyclists (motorcycling, incidentally, is the most
rapidly growing leisure-time activity in the nation). Each
year a number of professional church workers and laity
attend the Urban Training Center for Christian Mission
in Chicago, in part for the purpose of coming to under-
stand the language, culture, and life styles of the several
peoples who live, move, and have their being in the city.
During the past several months, seminary students and