LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1971, Page 100

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ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN LUTHERAN CHURCH

Mr. PRESIDENT, BROTHERS, AND SISTERS IN OuR RIsEN LorRD
JESUS CHRIST:

I come as a friend to speak to friends. And I come
with joy in my heart to bring you greetings from the
congregations of The American Lutheran Church.

At our 1968 convention, a resolution was presented
to declare fellowship with The Lutheran Church — Mis-
souri Synod. That resolution was many years in coming
— decades of prayer and preparation, and several years
of consultation. We were ready. The vote was com-
pletely unanimous. Because we deal with fellowship
questions very carefully, this resolution was submitted
to a referendum of every congregation, and the vote was
nearly 100 percent. There were no conditions, no hesi-
tancy, just joy and the trust that this was God’s will.
So I greet you from every congregation of The American
Lutheran Church in the words of Paul’s Letter to the
Ephesians (1:3-6):

Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord

Jesus Christ! For He has blessed us, in our union with

Christ, by giving us every spiritual gift in the heavenly

world. Before the world was made, God had already

chosen us to be His in Christ, so that we would be holy
and without fault before Him. Because of His love, God
had already decided that through Jesus Christ He would
bring us to Himself as His sons— this was His pleasure
and purpose. Let us praise God for His glorious grace,
for the free gift He gave using His dear Son. For by the
death of Christ we are set free and our sins are forgiven.

How great is the grace of God, which He gave to us in
such large measure!

We know, of course, that your history with this
question has been different, and that some of you still
struggle with this new situation of fellowship. We seek
to be understanding. We struggled for many years too.

' We hope you will be made free from your doubts and
may rejoice with us. My own heart yearns for all of
you to share our joy. I was weaned on Walther’s Law
and Gospel, taught by the same teacher in the same
classroom as your president. I have studied your great
writings, especially the Christian Dogmatics of Franz
Pieper, and have come to know many, many of you so
well that I would feel at home among you. You are the
people of God who have received His great grace. I be-
long to Christ and, in union with Him, I also belong to
you. For so great is His grace!

I come as a grateful servant to thank you for your
great work. We thank you for your proclamation of
the Gospel in this land and throughout the world. We
consider you to be a great church — not because you
are wealthy, not because God has given you greater
wisdom than others, not because of your leadership as
a church in many areas of church life, but because you
are faithful to the Gospel. That alone is your greatness
—and that is a gift from God and not of your own
making. The American Lutheran Church is a great
church, too, not because it makes any claims to wisdom,
not because it is many or energetic in its tasks, but
because it lays hold on God’s grace and is faithful. How
great is His grace!

Dr. Kent Knutson, President of The American Lutheran Church

I come as a seeker to listen so that I may know you
better. We need to listen to each other so that we may
understand in many areas of life today, and we need
also to listen to one another in the church. I grew up
on a farm in central Iowa and was taught the faith I still
hold in a little white country church. How often I have
thanked God for that! But we were isolated in so many
ways from you. There were caricatures of you among
us. I was told then that you were cold and callous, too
intellectual in your approach to the faith, and that you
did many wicked things such as drinking beer. We were
so self-righteous. We thought only we were evangelical.
But I learned that we were wrong when I got to know
you and could make my own judgments. We, as an
American Lutheran Church, have matured, and now we
know that you are an evangelical church, as warm in
your love for the Lord as we, unsurpassed among all
the people of God. I suppose that there are caricatures
among you about us. How could it be otherwise, since
many of you do not know us except through the inter-
pretation of others. I hope that you will listen to us
to hear what we really are saying and how we really are.

As I listen to you, I hear some questions. Let me
speak to three of them. I can do so only briefly in
this time.

I hear you asking about our attitude toward the Lu-