LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 115

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

“utheran Church. There were times during the Depres-
“gion when I think my father was the only man in the
‘congregation who had a job. We had an old preacher by
he name of Suhr, who confirmed my brother and me. I
> ean remember coming home every Sunday after church
“and my dad saying, “Boy, what a great sermon these
Missouri Synod preachers can put out.” Wasn’t much of
‘a congregation—didn’t have anything. But they had
he Word of God, they had a faithful pastor, and they
“had the essentials.

Twas brought up unlike a lot of people. I was brought
-up from childhood to think the Missouri Synod was a
2 great and marvelous organization. Nobody ever bad-
outhed the Missouri Synod in my home. My parents
“were laypeople, and they were pious, good people, and
- they loved that church. And I grew up loving it, too. And
I still do.

This church has honored me more than any human
being ever deserved to be honored. It honored me first in
my beginning, way back in my confirmation class; I
had excellent instruction. It honored me with a call as
professor to the seminary in Springfield. Something I
had always wanted to do, all my life. Then the
presidency of that school, and finally the presidency of
the church.

I can only stand before this final convention with
gratitude to God and gratitude to the good and loving
people of the Synod for having given me an opportunity
to render very faltering, very imperfect, and very
unsatisfactory service to this church. It’s been some-
thing that I do not deserve, and there are many who will
say that it’s something the church did not deserve also.
And I have to agree with them. But it happened, and I
am so pleased to see the way this church stuck together
and plugged along.

Now we arrive at a point where we have a new
President, a new day, a new beginning for our purposes
here, a new structure, a new way of increasing our
financial stewardship, and this church, I believe, is
ready to roll.

Billy Graham is quoted as saying the Missouri
Synod is a sleeping giant. Billy Graham is wrong—it is
a moving giant. This is a great church. The ingenuity
and the people that run this church and that make up its
membership—LLL, LWML, the laity, the kids in
classes—the whole organization has enormous vitality.
I sat with a church president the other day, who shall
remain nameless, and told him about Forward in
Remembrance, and he said, “Man, I sure would like to
be president of that church.” And I think that is exactly
the way I feel—this is a great church body.

We kick ourselves, we downgrade ourselves, we print
nasty articles about ourselves in newspapers, we con-
stantly pick at each other. And I can sense it at this
convention. There are people who even here don’t trust
anybody; they always assume that somebody in the
Synod is lying to them; they’ve been fed this by some of
these newspapers which keep pouring out, because
some people in the Synod will buy them.

And it’s given the whole Synod an inferiority

DEVOTIONS 115

So we read together the final word from The Book—“l thank
my God upon every remembrance of you...”

complex, a feeling we aren’t any good, we can’t do
anything, we’re divided, we’re hopeless, we’re wrong,
we're provincial, we’re old-fashioned, tra-la, tra-la.

Now, where have you seen a church that brings in—
that has as good an operation going with Blacks, with
Hispanics, with Orientals, with foreign missions, with
every kind of unfortunate and deprived person? As
you’ve listened to this that’s going on here, it’s been a
beautiful story of mission to the whole man, mission to
the whole world, mission to every kind of person and
every conceivable need of humankind. And I think it’s
time we cut out the badmouthing, and the backbiting,
and start realizing that God has given us marvelous
gifts and talents—and let’s use them in His service.

And the basic, underlying cause of it all is not that
we're so hot, but that God has been so good to us in
giving us His dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in giving
us His holy and precious Word to guide us and to
determine our faith, in pouring out His Holy Spirit upon
us, and in just standing around, you might say, saying,
“What else can I do to help you?”

Miracles just keep going on all the time in this dear
church of ours. And therefore as we close, I’d like those
of you that have your Bibles—why don’t we rise and
read together again Philippians 1, verses 3 through 9,
and apply it to the person standing next to you, to your
congregation, to your Synod, to your wife, husband,
children, your enemies, and all mankind.

“T thank my God for you every time I think of
you....”

Dear heavenly Father, as we make our homeward
journey, we thank You for the unspeakable and un-
deserved blessings You have poured out upon each and
every one of us, particularly the forgiveness of all our
sins, through the suffering and death of Your dear Son.
We thank You for the events of this week—for the high
spots which have given us happiness, for the low spots
which have taught us patience, for the fellowship we