LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1995, Page 90

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90 CONVENTION ESSAYS

This means becoming well informed and cross-culturally
sensitive, creative and assertive ina kindly way. For the
Christian congregation this means careful planning to help
every member to grow in a two-pronged activity: one is in-
reach; the other is outreach. Actually these two should be
united with a purpose word, f - 0 - r (for). That is, irireach
for outreach; that is,.edification for advance; preparation
for mission. ,

As one of my seminary professors once put it some years
ago: ;

; . The task of the Church involves the world. The busi-
ness of the Church is to strengthen its members in their
unity with each other and with their Head, in view of
the fact that the world threatens this unity and tends to
break off members of Christ to become members of the
world. The task of the Church lies furthermore in this,
that the Church is commissioned to invade the world
and capture members of the world for membership in
the body of Christ.* :

In all the world what word is so powerful that it can
turn people away from themselves to God; bring them to-
gether into a bond of fellowship; inspire them to plan and
work together for doing the work God has given; and en-
courage and support each other so they don’t fall apart?
Let’s face it—it has to be the Word of God and that Word in
the sacraments is the means through which the Holy Spirit
creates and sustains faith and empowers God’s pecple for
witness and service.

This is the Word God has entrusted to us. As St. Paul

assured the Christians at Corinth,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new cre-
ation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has
come. All this is from God, who through Christ recon-
ciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of recon-
ciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the
world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against
them, and entrusting to us the message of reconcilia-
tion. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making
His appeal through us (2 Cor. 5:17-20).

St. Paul regarded himself and his co-workers as called

ambassadors. Here we see what the Lutheran confessors .

regarded as a picture of the office of the holy ministry and
the divinity of the call by which God still provides pastors
and teachers through the local calling congregation. Under
the Great Commission however, not only ordained pastors,
but every baptized Christian has a responsible share in
serving our Lord as His sent ones—ambassadors, if you
will, each according to his/her spiritual gifts and station in
life.

In Christ we have a privilege inherent in our Lord’s
Great Commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations.”
That is a command, but it is a command graced with a
promise: “Surely I will be with you always, to the very end
of the age.”

What a privileged obligation. What a precious promise.
It has stood the test of time, trial, tribulation, not only in
the early New Testament church, but also down through
the centuries even into the life and times of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod.

All this because of Him who died and rose again in vic-
tory. As the Lord of life and Head of the whole Christian
church He can rightfully declare: “All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to Me.” Christ’s power enables
and prevails even in times of tyranny, terrorism, tragedy,

for there is another “T” word to remember, and that is tri-
umph. We have this sure confidence that God will always
have the last word—and it will be good! St. Paul became
convinced of that in his own outreach ministry: To the
Christians at Rome he wrote:

‘And we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love Him, who have been called ac-
cording to His purpose. ...

What, then, shall we say in reponse to this? If God is
for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His
own Son, but gave Him up for us all—how will He not
also, along with Him, graciously give us all things? ...
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him who loved us (Rom. 8:28, 31, 37). ;

Through Christ’s resurrection victory the genuine new
age has begun, that is, the New Testament age of pro-
claiming and demonstrating God’s redemptive act through
His Son by which the forgiveness of sin and its guilt and
punishment have been fully paid for, and in its place God
invites one and all to accept His free gift of a new life in the
here and now and beyond the grave eternally.

As pilgrim ambassadors our time to get this message out
to the world is short. We live on the edge of three time
zones: (1) Always moving out of the past (for which the gift
of memory can teach us), (2) into the present (for which we
can exercise a measure of planning and stewardship of
changing strategies for fluid times) and, (3) always into the
future (for which God gives us through His Word and
means of grace the strength to grow in outreach and un-
shakable trust in His promises that never fail!). Boldly we
pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.”

With complete confidence in the boundless grace of God
in Christ, the congregations of The Lutheran Church—Mis-
souri Synod have banded together all these years, still com-
mitted to a carefully developed Constitution and Bylaws.
In the footsteps of those who have gone before us we do this
to follow the example of the apostolic church and to share
the diversities of gifts for the common good. All this is for
the purpose of His body, the church, and the world which so
desparately stands in need of the Word of.Christ and the
impact of His redeeming love.* ,

God has blessed this unity of purpose richly in every
area of the Synod’s work. One need only to look again at
the many evidences of God’s abundant blessings as shown
throughout the reports and memorials in the 1995 Conven-
tion Workbook and in the presentations that will be heard
during the convention sessions.

But the unfinished task worldwide still looms large be-
fore us. Especially now every congregation of the Synod is
urged to seek, to find, and reach out to the world that has
come into its very neighborhoods. Opportunities in North
America alone are overwhelming. There’s hardly time to do
more than to mention some of them: American Indian,
African American, campus/international student min-
istries, Chinese, deaf and blind, Hispanic, Jewish, Korean,
Muslim, Russian, etc.

It is not the intent of this paper to be a 30-minute crash
course in mission methodology, but it is the intent to stir
one and all to a renewed commitment in sanctification, that
is, growing in the knowledge of Christ and His Word which