LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1977, Page 102

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BLACK CENTENNIAL SERMON 103

man’s plight in America with that of the enslaved
Israelites, the preacher says with a flourish:

The Lord will send some Moses

For to set His children free.

And the land will hear His thunder,
Like the blast from Gabriel’s horn.
For the Lord of Hosts is mighty
When He girds His armor on.

But for fear someone mistakes me,
I will pause right here to say

That I’m talking about our freedom
In a Biblistic way.

But the Moses is a-coming,
And he’s coming sure and fast.
I can hear his feet a-tromping.
I can feel his trumpet blast.

Yes, the Black people were a highly religious people.
They were numerous, about one tenth of the population
of the entire nation. They were concentrated, about
ninety percent of them in the rural South at that time.
They were restless and ready to migrate all over this
nation to whatever place they could find employment.
A wide door of opportunity was opened for the
Synodical Conference to begin work with the Black
people. So the Missouri Synod’s first foreign mission
program was launched on the home mission front.

In J. Frederick Doescher’s first report to the
Conference we find that the efforts were richly blessed
by the Lord, especially when the Sunday school and
day school were used. The Sunday school enrollment
in Little Rock, the first mission station, climbed from
two to forty in one month. The day school enrollment
there climbed from the initial enrollment of 43 in
September to ninety-three by November. These initial
successes served to convince the Synodical Conference
that they had found a wide door for effective mission
opportunity opened unto them. They took the Lord’s
challenge and launched this mission endeavor with
zeal and confidence.

It is truly interesting to observe how God’s con-
tinuing challenge has remained the same through the
years. In fact, the door of opportunity gets wider and
wider all the time. In Paul’s time those unsettling words
“into all the world” covered only a few million people.
One hundred years ago they referred to hundreds of
millions. Today they refer to a great population which
some project at six billion before the end of the century.
This population explosion and its chain reaction is
defying all attempts by man to bring it under control.
The list of birth control methods and gadgets seems to be
endless. A new method of birth control today hardly
seems to be newsworthy. In 1976 there were more
abortions recorded in the U.S. than ever before, but the
population explosion and its chain reaction seem to
continue unabated. Today those words “into all the
world” include billions of people. God says to us today:
“Behold, I set before you an open door which no man
can shut.”

The magnitude of God’s continuing challenge for us
today defies description, yes, it staggers the imagina-
tion. When I consider the Missouri Synod’s program of
worldwide missions, spanning the globe, in countless
countries, in ever-increasing numbers of languages and

cultures, I am proud to say that, for this Synod, it all
started with its outreach to Black people of the U.S.

I feel that we should change the name of the synod
and call it “The International Lutheran Church.” The
name “Missouri Synod” has become much too narrow. I
feel that The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod above
all other churches has a clear challenge and mandate
from God to become such an international movement.
We boast of having the “Word of God in its truth and
purity.” This boast does not impress me. Perhaps it was
important in Luther’s day, when Bibles were scarce and
reliable translations were even more scarce. Today
anyone who can read can have God’s Word in its truth
and purity. I feel that today the strength of The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is the clarity of the
cardinal doctrine of salvation. I make this conclusion
out of my experience in Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ
denominations. It is the LCMS that has this doctrine
completely free of synergism: “Therefore we conclude
that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the
Law.” It is so clear, says Rev. P. R. Hunt, that a
running man can read it and a fool can understand it.
We are debtors to the world to bring them this clear
word of salvation.

Today, after one hundred years, the age-old mission
field, Black ministry, presents the widest door of
opportunity to The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
During the last twenty-five years, in spite of the racial
unrest of the sixties and the pessimism of the early
seventies, the number of Black congregations in the
Synod has doubled. There were ninety black con-
gregations in the Synod in 1950. Because of the death of
the rurals, nineteen of these were consolidated into five,
but today there are 175 Black congregations in the
Synod. Of Black people in the Synod, there are more
than fifty thousand baptized souls and approximately
forty thousand communicant members. In 1975 ap-
proximately one thousand adults were received into
membership in the Black congregations of the Synod. A
similar figure would represent the juniors confirmed. In
1975 more than $700,000 was contributed by Black
congregations of the Synod for work at large. Almost
$6,000,000 was contributed for all purposes. Black
ministry has become strong in the Synod and is
becoming stronger with every passing year. It is not too
optimistic to expect the above figures to double again in
the next twenty-five years. After a hundred years the
mission field of Black or ethnic ministry is not only
God’s continuing challenge to the Synod but is perhaps
the most effective one. We must say in the words of the
apostle Paul: “A wide door for effective ministry is
opened to us.”

But the most inspiring and heartwarming part of
our text is the response of the apostle to God’s
continuing challenge. He says, “I will remain at
Ephesus until Pentecost.” He couldn’t bring himself to
a decision to go to Corinth at that time. He was doing a
great work at Ephesus, and he couldn’t leave. He could
see signs of the ultimate triumph of the Gospel in that
city, and he had to work the works of Him that sent him