Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 35
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 35

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

MISSIONS 35

faculty members, together with synodical mission staff
members and field personnel, have participated in
sharing groups consisting of airline flight-crew per-
sonnel in an effort to develop insights and understandings
that may enable the church to provide Word and sacra-
ment more effectively to these people and may equip
them more adequately for their ministry.

All of God’s people need to be glass cleaners, so that
we will see through the glass less darkly, so that people
everywhere will see our good works and glorify our
Father which is in heaven.

e. Shifting Emphases in a World Full of Change. This
is a world of change. So there have also been changes in
Church and Community Ministries during the past 2
years.

1) Board priorities have changed in a number of
instances. For example, there is now increasing emphasis
on a larger strategy (like the Metro Mission Movement
pilot in St. Louis), less on specific ministries. There is
lessened emphasis on undergirding District-initiated
pilot ministries (in large part because these have become
self-generating, since Districts are responding well to
new opportunities) and increased emphasis in our budget
on in-service training. There are many new emerging
arenas and contexts for ministry and for communication
of the Gospel. For example, there is an increased em-
phasis on nongeographic communities (single women,
insurance underwriters, airline flight-crew personnel,
high-income unemployed, police, seamen), less on
geographic groupings of people.

2) A major changing emphasis has been the change
from a ministry to people of color, to a ministry with
people of color. The black (and red and brown) power
movements in the world and in the church have basic
implications for the way the Gospel is proclaimed in
black or Indian or Spanish communities. In the past,
ministries or experiments were too often shaped and
initiated in inner-city communities, with little or no
consultation with black clergy or lay people in the area.
We thank God for the loving initiative of our black
brothers—that they were willing to jar us out of our
blindness, to confront us with our institutional racism.
The Association of Black Lutheran Churchmen now
gives counsel and help to the Board for Missions. Repre-
sentatives of the ABLC are involved in the planning
stages of pilot ministries for black communities. They
refine and approve any project before it begins. A group
of blacks, clergy and lay, was consulted in the whole
area of black urban training. Based on their reactions
and suggestions, an urban intern program is now under
way in Oakland, Calif., and a training program for black
lay workers will officially get off the ground in Chicago
this fall. The Board for Missions, the Board for Higher
Education, and Concordia Teachers College, River
Forest, will jointly undergird the Chicago training ven-
ture, shaped and developed out of a felt need of black
Lutheran Christians in Chicago. Here is a portion of the
statement of purpose for the Black Urban Training
Program of Chicago:

Reconciliation of all men with Jesus Christ as their Savior
and Lord, and reconciliation between men transcends and
affects the whole educational process as it is carried out by
the Black Urban Training Program of Chicago. It is the
primary business of the program to develop in the students
a sense of mission and ministry and to deepen their com-
mitment to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The aim
of the Black Urban Training Program of Chicago is to present
to the church and the community graduates who accept
reconciliation as a desirable goal, who appreciate the need
for reconciliation, and who have a desire to work to attain
reconciliation in the church and the community.

.. .We propose, then, to develop a core of Christian lay-
men, who will gain the experience and educational equip-
ment needed to carry on the church’s witness and ministry
during these critical times. Our purpose is to provide the
student with a Christian understanding and knowledge of the
black urban scene, fostering in him the spiritual, intellectual,
cultural, and social development that grows out of the black
condition; training and developing in them the proper atti-
tudes, so that they can perform the tasks that, because of
extenuating circumstances, only “blacks” can perform in
the black community. We further propose to prepare our
students to work effectively with congregations which are
changing racially or are about to change, and also in congre-
gations in the white communities where the witness of the
black Christian is needed.

The Board for Missions feels it has a role in facilitating
the witness and ministry of Lutheran Christians related
situationally to the black-power movement — and partic-
ularly the witness and ministry of the black Lutheran
clergy, as they through the power of the Gospel seek to
expose and eradicate the racism that exists in the church
as an institution. More important, however, than the role
we can and must play is the extent to which black Lu-
theran Christians have helped us. We are grateful to
God for their equipping and sensitizing us; the church’s

urban ministry has thereby been greatly strengthened.

f. Communications and Feedback. Part of the function
of the Church and Community Ministries office is to
review and evaluate the various pilot ministries and then
to share with the whole church the most significant find-
ings and insights uncovered. To a certain extent some of
these insights have been “fed back” to the church—
through the “Church and Community” page in the
monthly Board for Missions Mission Memo (which goes
to all District mission boards and executives), through
occasional articles and presentations, through convention
reports. But during the past 2 years the staff has initiated
new attempts to communicate the insights and emerging
models for ministry back to the church.

1) Sensitization of Future Pastors. The Board for
Missions, in team with the faculties and students of our
two seminaries, is helping sensitize and equip students
to mission and ministry in a variety of contexts in a
world full of change. The evaluation-sharing sessions
described in the next paragraph have involved both
faculty and student participants; student-professor teams
both contribute to and glean insights from their participa-
tion in “cutting edge” ministries; in team with the Dis-
tricts, vicarages that endeavor to prepare men for some
of the new dimensions of mission are being created;
experimental courses are being offered on both cam-
puses; and to a limited extent the secretary of Church
and Community Ministries is involved in part-time
teaching.