Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 41
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 41

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

MISSIONS 41

to the whole world. We will approach men of other
faiths in humility and love. We rejoice over all Chris-
tian efforts to witness Christ to the world. We recognize
our sister mission churches as being subservient not
to us but to the Lord. We will gratefully use all means
which God offers through science and technology for
the task of witnessing to the increasing populations
of the world. We reconsecrate ourselves and all we
have to the task of witnessing Christ to the whole world.

3. The Church Is Christ’s Mission to the Church

We believe that faith in Christ brings every Chris-
tian into a real and living unity with all other members
of Christ’s body, the church. The same Word of Christ
that bids Christians to teach all nations commands them
to nurture, edify, and educate one another in Christian
faith and life. We are ready therefore to witness and
to listen to all Christians, working together when it will
edify Christ’s body and advance His mission, refusing
cooperation on such occasions when it would deny
God’s Word. Our Confessions are not intended to wall
us off from others but to give us opportunity to confess
Christ and His Gospel boldly and lovingly to all Chris-
tians. Instead of using our Christian education agencies
in our own institutional self-interest we will try to
make them more effective tools in equipping God’s peo-
ple for Christ’s mission.

4, The Church Is Christ’s Mission to the Whole
Society

Jesus Christ is Lord of all the world and every area
of life. We affirm therefore that the Christian is on
mission for God in the home, church, state, and every
area of life. We recognize the difficulty of understanding
in every instance whether God desires us to act indi-
vidually or corporately, but we will seek His will
through prayer and mutual study that we might dis-
cover and further His good purposes for all men in
every area of life. Since all our fellowmen come from
the Father’s creating hand and His Son’s nail-pierced
hands reach out in love to all, we will ‘seek the peace
of the city” and commit ourselves to extending justice,
social acceptance, and a full share in God’s bounty to
all people who are discriminated against and oppressed
by reason of race, class, creed, or other distinction.

5. Tne Church Is Christ’s Mission to the Whole Man

We believe that the love and action of the holy triune
God embrace the total man (body, soul, and mind) and
that our Lord became man to minister to the needs of
the whole man and will at His return solemnly report
whether or not we fed, clothed, and visited Him in the
least of His hungry, naked, and forsaken brethren. We
acknowledge that wherever we meet a person in God’s
mission, we are dealing with someone whose body, soul,
and mind are related in one totality. We therefore
pledge ourselves, individually and corporately, to serve
the needs of the total man, proclaim to him the Good
News of the living Christ, bring him instruction in all
useful knowledge, and help him in every bodily need.
As we offer him economic aid and help him to earn

his daily bread in dignity and self-respect, we are not
forgetting the Gospel but remembering it. As such acts
of love grow out of our faith in Christ, they illuminate
our witness to the Gospel.

6. The Whole Church Is Christ’s Mission

All who are baptized into Christ are baptized into
His death and resurrection, into His mission and into
His body. Every Christian is commissioned a missionary
through baptism. We deplore and will work to remove
all barriers that prevent or inhibit our Christian wit-
ness: the distinctions between clergy and laity, between
races, between institutional churches, and between na-
tions. We rejoice over every believer in Christ, for the
unity in Christ’s body of all who truly believe in Him
is as real as the divisions among institutional churches.
Wherever Christ is preached, His mission is imple-
mented, for the whole church is His mission.

This summary of what we affirmed 4 years ago
should refresh our minds on the substance of the Mis-
sion Affirmations. These affirmations are not a program,
not a plan of action. They are a statement of what we
believe we are: they are the basic assumptions under-
lying everything that the church does.

The Commision on Mission and Ministry in the
Church was constituted in the same convention in order
to help the church see the implications of these affirma-
tions in all of its life and work and to speak to the
church about those positions and actions which are not
in harmony with this statement of self-understanding.

The Handbook of the Synod lists, among others, the
following responsibilities of the commission (2.111 4d):

1. evaluate the past procedures of The Lutheran

Church — Missouri Synod, its resources, and the means

and adequacy of training Christian workers for the vari-

ous and special ministries as dictated by the needs of
mankind;

2. consider and probe for new or adapted strategies,
resources, and procedures for enhancing the effectiveness
of the church’s mission.

The commission does not believe that it should oper-
ate as a parallel or a competitive agency to existing
agencies in the church but that it should carry out its
work through the boards and commissions which have
operational responsibilities. The commission expressed
its own self-understanding as follows:

The commission seeks to be an instrument in God’s hands
to instill an understanding of His mission in all members
of the church — of His love to man as man, in all the
dimensions and relations of his life, that he may live in
fellowship with God through Jesus Christ in this life,
become himself an instrument of God’s mission to his
fellowman, and reach the ultimate destiny of full fellow-
ship with God in the life to come.

In trying to fulfill this objective, the commission has
been in consultation with representatives of congrega-
tions, District administrations, synodical schools, and
the staffs of the operational boards and commissions of
the church. These consultations have convinced us that
much is happening within the spirit of the Mission Affir-
mations in all areas of the life and work of the church.
We can list these developments only in the most general
terms.