LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 249

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VII. 2013 RES. 4-06A TASK FORCE REPORT TO THE SYNOD
(18%) were raised as Christians or members of some other religion,
but now say they have no religious affiliation.
4.

There are clear differences between certain demographic groups when
it comes to religious affiliation. For example, younger adults are far
more likely than older Americans to identify as religious “nones,”
men are more likely than women to be religiously unaffiliated, and
whites are more likely than blacks or Hispanics to identify as “nonreligious.” But despite these differences, the major trends seen in
American religion since 2007—the decline of Christians and rise of
the “nones”—have occurred in some form across many demographic
groups, including men and women, older and younger Americans,
people with different levels of education, and different races and
ethnicities.

5. The share of Americans who identify with non-Christian faiths, such as
Islam and Hinduism, has grown modestly in recent years, from 4.7%
in 2007 to 5.9% in 2014. Muslims now account for 0.9% of the U.S.
adult population (up from 0.4% in the 2007 Landscape Study), while
Hindus make up 0.7% of U.S. adults (up from 0.4% in 2007).

Indeed, this is an era ripe for Christians to be always prepared
to make a defense to anyone who asks them for a reason for the
hope that is in them, yet to do so with gentleness and respect (1 Pet.
3:15). The pastors who serve LCMS congregations are well-trained to
preach, teach, properly administer the Sacraments of Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, and offer sound biblical, pastoral care. They typically
find themselves occupied with the demands of caring and providing
pastoral leadership for a congregation of active and inactive church
members. They are also committed to outreach to the lost with the
saving Gospel of Jesus Christ into the mission fields in which they
and their church members live. But the demand for outreach activity
frequently outpaces the supply of energy and time that most pastors
possess. There is truly a need for those who can serve in the fertile
mission fields of the United States.
Therefore, Task Force 4-06A not only considered the theology of
the public ministry and its practice in the LCMS, but also examined
the possibilities for expanding mission reach by considering the role
of evangelists (or witnesses) in the New Testament with an eye to their
role in the twenty-first century.
The New Testament of God’s Word references “evangelists” three
times. In Acts 21:8, we learn of Philip the “evangelist”: “On the next
day we departed and came to Caesarea, and we entered the house
of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with
him.” He is the same Philip who left Jerusalem in haste earlier due to
the persecution of Christians described in Acts 8:4–6 and preached
Christ in Samaria:
Now those who were scattered went about preaching the word. Philip
went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the Christ.
And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said
by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did.

Indeed, Philip also went down from Jerusalem to Gaza in Acts
8:26–40 at the direction of an angel of the Lord to encounter the
Ethiopian eunuch and interpret the prophecy of Isaiah so that the
Holy Spirit could lead the Ethiopian to ask for Christian Baptism.
In his Second Letter to Timothy, Paul was inspired by the Spirit
to call upon Timothy to do the work of an evangelist: “As for you,
always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry” (4:5).
It is also Paul the apostle who, in his Letter to the Ephesians
(4:11), described the Lord’s gifts to His Church, including evangelists: “And He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
pastors and teachers.”
It has been observed that the term evangelist has circulated in the
Church’s vocabulary for nearly 2,000 years. That acquaintance, as is

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often the case, has made the word popular but left it without precise
definition.81 The question has been asked, “Is ‘evangelist’ an office
or a gift in the New Testament?” While the biblical record may not
detail a specific office of evangelist, it does describe the work of an
evangelist and even encourages it.
This being said, it is the purpose of this section of the task force’s
report to consider the need for the development of the role of “evangelists” in the LCMS. There is a great opportunity for evangelists and
evangelism by congregational members who can be trained to team
with the ordained and commissioned church workers of LCMS for
intentional and targeted outreach among specific people groups with
the saving and powerful Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Even as Solomon was inspired to observe that “there is nothing
new under the sun,” (Eccl. 1:9), the recognition of such opportunities
is not new in the LCMS. The first president of the LCMS, Rev. Dr.
C. F. W. Walther, preached a sermon in 1842 in which he proclaimed,
Thus, my dear ones, you see: the office of Preacher or Caretaker
of souls has not been instituted so that no one else is responsible for
teaching or the care of souls. No, the whole congregation is to be a holy
people, a royal priesthood. Each Christian should bear the needs of the
soul of his neighbor in his heart and assist in the advance of the salvific
Gospel (in the lives) of men so that the kingdom of Satan in the world
is destroyed and the Kingdom of God expanded. Oh, how differently
things would look; how much greater and more wonderful would be the
blessing of the Word of God, if each Christian recognized his holy calling and administered his royal priesthood. With that in mind the Apostle
cries to the Corinthians, “Strive to love. Be zealous for the spiritual
gifts, but primarily for the gift of prophesying Christ’s message of salvation.” [The German imperative is plural, denoting all of the people.]82

Walther’s preaching is not surprising in light of the biblical reality that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was spread by apostles (Acts 6)
as well as by God’s people of various vocations due to the persecution of the Jerusalem Christians (Acts 8). Michael Green noted in his
Evangelism in the Early Church:
One of the most striking features in evangelism in the early days was
the people who engaged in it. Communicating the faith was not regarded
as the preserve of the very zealous or of the officially designated evangelist. Evangelism was the prerogative and the duty of every church member. We have seen apostles and wandering prophets, nobles and paupers,
intellectuals and fishermen all taking part enthusiastically in this the
primary task committed by Christ to his Church. The ordinary people of
the Church saw it as their job: Christianity was supremely a lay movement, spread by informal missionaries. The clergy of the Church saw it
as their responsibility, too: bishops and presbyters, together with doctors
of the Church like Origen and Clement, and philosophers like Justin
and Tatian, saw the propagation of the gospel as their prime concern.83

Green further related this observation from the Early Church
through its first, second, and third centuries to this twenty-first century with a challenge:
Unless there is a transformation of contemporary church life so that
once again the task of evangelism is something which is seen as incumbent on every baptized Christian, and is backed up by a quality of living
which outshines the best that unbelief can muster, we are unlikely to
make much headway through techniques of evangelism. People will not
believe that Christians have good news to share until they find that bishops and bakers, university professors and housewives, bus drivers and
street corner preachers are all alike keen to pass it on, however different
their methods may be. And they will continue to believe that the Church
is an introverted society composed of ‘respectable’ people and bent on
its own preservation until they see in church groupings and individual
Christians the caring, the joy, the fellowship, the self-sacrifice and the
openness which marked the early Church at its best.84

2016 Convention Workbook