Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 38
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 38

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

38 MISSIONS

was, here is God, saying what He has to say, Himself the
interpreter and the interpreted, affirming His love in action
and revealing the nature of His divine intention for human
life.

But this Word of God is unheeded, unheard, undis-
covered, inarticulate for multitudes of men. The Christ of
God is a silent figure, unknown, unrecognized, the Word
without a hearing. Ours it is to utter Him to the ends of the
earth; to be interpreters of God’s interpretation of Himself.
You may remember the haunting little phrase in St. Mat-
thew’s Gospel, the Gospel that begins the New Testament,
not because it is the first but because it looks back to the Old,
a phrase which in its first occurrence runs: “which, being
interpreted, is: God with us.” That’s the phrase by which
evangelism lives. We are so to take the living truth as to
bring it home to men. We are trustees of that which, being
interpreted, is: God with us; which, not being interpreted,
is silence, emptiness, the dark.

... there may well be circumstances and periods when
one aspect of the total mission is more to the fore than an-
other. But in purpose and in intention the mission is a unity —
a unity of endeavor in which all activities are gathered into
one objective and serve the one goal of Christian com-
munication.

We as a church body have from our beginning fre-
quently neglected God’s mission entirely. When we have
been in mission, it’s often been late in the day and with
the meagerest of resources rather than throwing our
whole life and soul into it. We’ve frequently gone in with
a distorted or incomplete understanding of the mission:
we've talked about “our” missions rather than God’s
mission; we’ve denied the oneness of the mission and of
the body of Christ by acting in isolation from other Chris-
tians; we’ve carried on as if mission were a one-way
street—always going out from us the other way. We’ve
often implied that mission is that which full-time mis-
sionaries are engaged in overseas and that which Chris-
tians in this land are involved in only through their
offerings and prayers; we’ve sometimes narrowed the
mission to something that concerns only a man’s soul
rather than that which speaks to his whole life.

We have not always been faithful to God’s mission.
And yet—thank God! —this is not the last word.

Jesus Christ, the living Word, comes to us once again
to bring us forgiveness and to send us out in mission.

This forgiving, edifying, living Word is still at work
in the church: new-creating living words or letters, as
He has done in the past, preparing and giving gifts of the
Spirit to the people of God, for faithful witness and
ministry.

Every day of this convention, every day of this mis-
sion anniversary year, every day of our life God is calling
us again, as Cragg says, “to be His interpreters... stand-
ing as we do between the speech of God and the ears
of the world.”

Jesus is God’s Word, and we are part of the body
of Christ.

Jesus Christ, Alpha and Omega, the First and the
Last.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.”

“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the
Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever
shall be, world without end. Amen.”

Though devils all the world should fill,
All eager to devour us,

We tremble not, we fear no ill,

They shall not overpower us.

This world’s prince may still

Scowl fierce as he will,

He can harm us none,

He’s judged; the deed is done;

One little word can fell him.

The Word they still shall let remain
Nor any thanks have for it;
He’s by our side upon the plain
With His good gifts and Spirit.
And take they our life,

Goods, fame, child, and wife,
Let these all be gone,

They yet have nothing won,
The Kingdom ours remaineth.
BOARD FOR MISSIONS

A. E. JORDAN, Chairman

WILLIAM H. KOHN, Executive Secretary
APPENDIX A

Report and Recommendations
of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Administration
of Work Among the Deaf
History

When The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, meet-
ing in convention at Detroit in 1965, adopted the Mission
Affirmations with their emphasis on the congregations
and Districts of the Synod becoming involved in a larger
and total mission program and when at the same con-
vention a reorganization of the Synod’s missions under
a single Board for Missions was enacted, these measures
brought the proposal that deaf mission work be included
with the mission program of the Districts. This proposal
for a change in the administration of deaf missions was
presented to the members of the Ephphatha Conference
meeting at Concordia Teachers College, River Forest,
in July 1966.

During that Ephphatha Conference the missionaries
to the deaf met with members of the Board for Missions
staff for an initial discussion on the future of deaf mis-
sions. At this meeting it became apparent that the con-
gregations and pastors of deaf missions and mission
executives of the Districts would need a great deal more
information and time to study these matters on the
local level.

Numerous procedural questions were raised. For
example: Who would administer and subsidize a mis-
sionary who serves in two or more geographical Dis-
tricts? And what provision would be made to overcome
the communication difficulties so the deaf might partici-
pate in the local District activities (cf. paragraph 2 of
“Concerns”)? Strong feelings were expressed, all stem-
ming from a deep concern for the preservation and
growth of the mission to the deaf.

The 1966 Ephphatha Conference requested the Board
for Missions to appoint an ad hoc committee of the board
to study this matter. It was requested that this committee
consist of the six regional counselors and the officers of
the Ephphatha Conference, together with the Board for
Missions staff personnel.