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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 19

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
In this 125th year of LCMS international missions, our
work has grown to a size, scope, depth, and complexity that
could be deemed by some as beyond our capacity. Yet God
has provided wonderful support from individuals, congregations, districts, the LWML, Mission Central, our seminaries,
universities, etc. He has also blessed us with capable leadership
on every level of our international work. Our global directors
bring with them nearly 70 years of experience on the foreign
field. Our International Center staff is small and needs bolstering, but is experienced, working hard and becoming a close-knit
unit, supporting one another with patience and love in service to
the missionaries, their families, and our partner churches. Missionaries in every region have shown signs of great adjustment,
traction in their work, and collegiality within their respective
teams. Trust is growing within the far-flung, global organization
affectionately and simply known as the “OIM.”
More needs to be done in building up our capacity and improving services to missionaries, partner and emerging partner
churches. We must improve our own collaboration with major
institutions such as our seminaries and universities, the agencies and auxiliaries of Synod, RSOs, districts, and every type of
donor, stakeholder, or supporter imaginable. We strive to give
constant, prayerful consideration to potential improvements in
our practice to enhance efficiencies, while working within the
LCMS ends policies established by the Board for International
Mission.
We are confident that OIM has the wide support of our
church body, President Harrison, Chief Mission Officer Rev.
Robson, the Board of Directors, the Board for International
Missions, Chief Administrative Officer, Chief Financial Officer,
LCMS Accounting, Communications, Mission Advancement,
and Human Resources, etc. In the next triennium, the LCMS
Office of National Mission Executive Director, Rev. Robert
Zagore, and I will continue examining how we might enhance
the sharing of information and resources that collectively might
be deployed to the LCMS in service to people of all nations,
whether they are on the other side of the globe or in our own
backyard. This cooperation should enhance resources available
to all our LCMS congregations and districts in cross-cultural
efforts.
While some choose to work independently, far more are
those who want to walk together with a united voice and a cohesive, multi-generational strategy in bringing the pure Gospel
of Christ to all nations. We are honored to walk together with
the brothers and sisters of the LCMS in expanding our mission effectiveness. Many are they who pray for and sacrificially
support our efforts. The staff and missionaries, along with our
many global partners, all rejoice in the support and prayers of
the LCMS. There is much for which we ought to be thankful
and joyful as Lutherans in mission.
Our Regional Operations Team consists of global directors,
regional business managers, and our executive staff. Among us,
we continually ask the hard questions. What are the distinctive
merits of joint mission endeavors in the name of the LCMS that
justify the wonderful support we enjoy? What do we do well
in the name of Jesus and on behalf of those who have called
us to this service that merits the prayers, offerings, and good
will of the LCMS? Are we proactive and effective in preaching Christ crucified to the nations, teaching faithfully and concretely establishing faithful ministry that can continue after we

are gone? Are our mercy efforts supportive of the Gospel and
in harmony with complex local cultural nuances, history, and
relationships? Are our endeavors faithful to the very principles
of the Reformation? As we ask these basic questions, and pray
for God’s wisdom, we seek means to measure very concretely
the outcomes of our efforts while understanding that often our
work brings its greatest fruit only after decades of labor, or generations into the future.

Multi-Generational Mission
As a former church planter, I still hear stories from the
three fields I served that reflect the need for patience. Only recently, I heard that a boy I taught 33 years ago in inner-city
Lima (in my very first missionary evangelism call, after four
months of language school) named Alejandro Carrera is now a
45-year-old Lutheran pastor in Peru. A couple years ago, I was
told that one of multiple terrorists who had been assigned to
kill me, and whom I had spotted on multiple occasions coming
late and leaving early at services I conducted in a new church
plant in Puente Piedra, Peru, later came to faith. This was in
part due to my sermons but also my colleague who followed me
in this work, absolved him of his sins in the midst of tears, and
then catechized him. Decades later, I learned that this penitent
terrorist had also become a Lutheran pastor. The work is often
slow, and the fruits not always at first evident, but steadfast,
continued labor, prayers, faithful teaching and preaching, bring
eternal blessings in God’s good time. When he was asked, “Why
didn’t you kill Pastor McMiller?” his response was, “He only
preached about Jesus, and Pastor McMiller only came during
siesta; we never killed people during siesta.”
From the perspective of church bodies, we can illustrate
the perspective of patience in multi-generational efforts by citing war-torn Sierra Leone in Africa. After missionaries had
been expelled under threat of their lives, and the country had
passed through the great calamities of a horrific civil war and
the Ebola crisis, it is now a flourishing church. Today, nearly 40
years after the first missionaries arrived, though impoverished
by our standards, they are rich in their own personal stewardship of the Gospel, building their own churches, schools, and
seminary with very little North American funding. They are educating their own church leaders and pastors with limited missionary presence (i.e., one career missionary couple, Rev. Doug
Thompson and his wife, Angie). After the initial work of LCMS
missionaries, many short-term groups assisted this church, and
now the Thompsons, all of whom have been exceedingly careful
to not create dependencies and only focus on teaching Jesus.
Not only does this church body now exercise great ownership
and relatively bountiful stewardship in the midst of poverty, but
they are also at peace with one another.
Another is the Iglesia Luterana Confesional de Chile. After
nearly 100 years of struggle, but with limited foreign missionary presence and carefully measured and limited financial support, this church body is planting congregations throughout the
country. With LCMS support in response to multiple disasters,
the ILCC has doubled in size in the last decade. It now supports
other partners and emerging churches in the region with pastors
and theological education for lay leaders and future pastors.
The members are also mercifully receiving Venezuelan refugees
and assisting the LCMS in providing much needed support of
medical supplies back into their formerly rich home country of
2019 Convention Workbook