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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 329

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

V. REPORT OF THE 2016 RES. 4-03B TASK FORCE ON RECOGNIZED SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
should realize how rare such an approach would be, how difficult it
would be for a couple to set themselves against the momentum that
beginning a process of IVF involves, how hard it would be to resist
the pressure to use acquired gametes, to produce additional embryos that are not implanted, to screen those embryos for defects,
or to secure the service of a surrogate. Part of the sadness of life is
that we sometimes cannot and at other times ought not do what we
deeply desire to do. If technologies of assisted reproduction often
distort the meaning of the presence of children, we should not allow a sense of desperation to tempt us to transform the meaning of
procreation into a technical act of reproduction.
Although we recognize and acknowledge the sadness of infertility, Christians have good reasons to resist the desperate desire
for a child of one’s own. In the first place, we should be clear that
there is for Christians no continuing obligation to have children.
The one-flesh union of husband and wife should always turn outward; a child is the way in which that most naturally happens, but
it is not the only way for them to do so. The divine word “be fruitful and multiply,” spoken at the creation, is as much a blessing as
a command. And insofar as it is a command, it has been reshaped
and transformed in the history of redemption. Because The Child
has been born—that is, the promised Child in whom human life has
been created anew—we have no need to produce generation after
generation of children.
Moreover, those who are unmarried or childless, whether that
state is deliberately chosen or an accident of one’s personal history,
have an important role in the life of the church. In their singleness
they remind us that the wedding feast of the Lamb is something
quite different from the restoration of our earthly marriages; in their
childlessness they remind us that the church grows not because of
our natural capacity to give birth but through the grace of adoption as God’s children. Theirs is a special vocation in service to the
whole church.
Indeed, the antidote to a desperate search for a child of one’s
own is given us in Baptism. There we learn to take seriously that,
as St. Paul writes, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of
God.” There we relinquish any claim to a child of our own and,
having given it up, receive the child back as one before whom we
now stand as the representatives and mediators of God’s covenant
love and care. Therefore, it is neither biology nor genetics that is at
the heart of parenthood; rather, it is the lifelong commitment to be
a parent to the child whom God has adopted as His own and now
places into our hands. Knowing ourselves to be God’s children only
by adoption, we can rejoice in the truth that, whether our children
have been given us through natural birth or through adoption, they
are not our possession but a trust given us by God.

Conclusion
We can draw together these several lines of discussion and
summarize what it means to think of a child as God’s gift if we
think of children within three angles of vision: in the light of our
created nature; in the light of the new creation into which we are
baptized; and in the light of the redeemed creation God promises,
when all of us will share as members of Christ’s Body in the marriage feast of the Lamb.
We are created as embodied creatures, occupying a fixed place
within the generations of humankind. Lines of kinship and descent
locate and identify us, and the sexual union of a man and a woman
is naturally ordered toward the birth of children. Hence, the child is
less a product of our will and choice than a gift God bestows on the
embodied love of a man and a woman. In this way God continues

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to sustain and care for the creation.
Nevertheless, that natural kinship is always in need of transformation. We need to be shaped in a way of life that does not think
of children as our possessions. Therefore, within the church we
bring children for Baptism into the new life we share in Jesus, the
crucified and risen One. In handing the child over for Baptism, parents acknowledge that, in the most fundamental sense, this child is
not “their own.” The kinship that identifies us is not determined by
DNA; it is the life we share in the new community that is Christ’s
Body.
Finally, we live toward a day in which the creation redeemed
in Christ will be fully perfected. Even now we are given a hint
of that day in the Eucharistic meal the church shares. And in that
redeemed creation all of us—husbands and wives, parents and children—will share as brothers and sisters in the great Eucharist that
is the wedding feast of Christ and His church.

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V. Report of the 2016 Res. 4-03B Task
Force on Recognized Service
Organizations
1. Revitalizing the Recognized Service
Organization Program
Taking note of the Synod’s long history of recognizing contributions made by service organizations (RSOs), as well as the
changing needs of the Synod and of social service organizations
(especially with changes in governmental regulation and oversight), and the concerns raised over the years as to the continued
health and usefulness of the RSO program, the 2016 convention
of the Synod (Proceedings, pp. 146–7) assembled and charged the
2016 Res. 4-03B Task Force:
•

To review and report on the original purpose and intent
of the RSO program and its predecessors.

•

To determine the needs of and benefits to the Synod
with respect to the RSO program.

•

To identify the best model for the Synod to engage with
organizations that (1) foster the mission and ministry of
the church and that (2) engage in programs that are in
harmony with the programs of the Synod.

•

To recommend changes to the RSO program, and/or the
elimination of the program, and/or replacement of the
current RSO program with a new relationship model
that provides benefit to the Synod and the social service
agency, and/or develop and recommend other solutions.

•

To recommend appropriate changes to the LCMS Bylaws, as needed.

•

To ensure that all recommendations maintain the important relationships with the agencies that are recognized
by the LCMS, foster the mission and ministry of the
church, engage in program activity that is in harmony
with programs of the Synod, and respect and not act
contrary to the doctrine and practice of the Synod.
2019 Convention Workbook