LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 68

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68 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Part lll

Introduction

Grace, mercy, and peace to each of you from God the Fa-
ther and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is both an honor and a privilege for me to present to
you this morning the third and final part of my President’s
report. Before I begin, I first want to express a genuine
word of thanks to the Synod for the honor and privilege of
serving as your President during these past three years. It
has truly been a wonderful experience with many chal-
lenges, and also with many blessings as well. So, again,
thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve you in this
way.

In the first part of my report, printed in the Convention
Workbook, I made the point that we as a Synod are a fam-
ily, a very special family. We are members of the family
called the holy Christian church. We are members of the
family of Christian believers called Lutheran, and finally,
we are members of that particular Lutheran family of
Christians called The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.
As I think a bit more about the picture of our Synod as a
family, I cannot help but also think of this synodical con-
vention as being sort of a family reunion, So, first of all, I
want to say, “Welcome to the family reunion.”

How clearly I can recall when I was yet a boy growing
up in western Iowa, the family reunions | attended with my
parents and brother each summer. The first part of August
we would always go to the Maaske family reunion, then
later in August to the Barry family reunion. Both reunions
were always fun events. I remember that there was always
plenty of food. There was also always lots of family conver-
sation, catching up on the latest news with one another,
and plenty of fun. My aunts would sit around and talk
about the children. My uncles would generally go off and
play horseshoes and talk about business matters. The
younger people would play softball and the children, well,
they would just sort of run wild, generally getting into
everything and exhausting themselves by day’s end. Dri-
ving home at the end of the day, my dad would usually say,
“It would be sort of fun to be in so and so’s car right now to
hear what they are talking about.” Mom would say things
like, “What did you think of Susy’s new boyfriend?” or
“What did you think of Aunt Em’s new cherry cobbler
recipe? It gets better every time we have it.” My brother
and I would sit in the backseat of the car and listen or per-
haps fall asleep, for family reunions can really wear a per-
son out, especially if as a child you romp around all after-
noon.

Next, as I thought about my family reunions, I started to
think about our Synod’s convention. In a way, I believe that
our synodical conventions are like family reunions. It is a
family reunion of the Synod, which is represented by you,
the delegates, chosen by each Circuit of our Synod. You
come here representing the congregations in your Circuit. I
have a suspicion that you will grow tired and weary by the
end of our reunion time together. But already I have no-
ticed that friends are catching up with one another and be-

coming reacquainted. So, in this way and in many others,
our convention is like a family reunion.

The Two Most Important Words
for Our Synod’s Family Reunion

Our synodical family has its work cut out for it at this:
family reunion. You have all received the first issue of
Today’s Business, which sets before you the various pro-
posed resolutions which we as a family will discuss and de-
bate. There are so many different issues it. may become
easy to lose sight of the.key goals we need to keep in mind
as we do our work over the next several days. I would like
to suggest to you this morning that the two most important
words we need to keep in mind as we do our work over the
next six days are these: faithfulness and outreach. All our
decisions need to be made with these two key words in
mind. Our synodical family needs to be absolutely commit-
ted to making faithfulness and outreach our two highest
priorities. Let me explain why. '

We, as a family of believers, have committed ourselves
to a very distinct and unique confession of the Christian
faith. We are Lutherans. We are confessional Lutherans.
That is, we are totally committed to remaining faithful to
the doctrines and teachings of our Lutheran church con-
tained in the Book of Concord. As such, we Missouri Synod
Lutherans have been known as orthodox, conservative, con-
fessional Lutherans since our very earliest days. We are
committed to remaining faithful, absolutely faithful, to
Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, and thus we say
boldly before the world, “This we believe, teach, confess,
and practice.” We include the word practice because if all
we do is give lip service to our confession, then we are not
being the kind of church body our Lord would have us be.

But then we turn immediately to the second important
word for our Synod’s family reunion: outreach. Here also
we as a synodical family need to recognize the fact that we
have much to do—much to do. We need to seek every possi-
ble opportunity to reach out and share the Gospel. This
means that we actually do speak of our faith to our family,
to our husbands and wives, children and grandchildren
and, yes, also to those persons whom God places in our
daily lives. This means that we actually do invite our
friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers to church with
us. This means that we do give prime attention—prime at-
tention—to expanding our world-mission program and our
outreach efforts across the Districts of our Synod.

That key word, outreach, is particularly appropriate at
this convention. We are privileged at this convention to cel-
ebrate the 100th anniversary of our Synod’s world-mission
program. What a special blessing this is for us! We are able
to thank God for His many blessings for these past 100
years as our Synod has grown increasingly active in the
area of world missions. You will continue to hear during
our time together about the work our Synod is doing in
many parts of the world. As I said in my speech to the floor
committees, “Now is the time of unprecedented opportunity