LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 60

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60

REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

Part III
Faithfulness and Outreach
Our Synod’s Twofold Challenge
and Opportunity
Introduction
Let me begin this third part of the President’s report to
our 1998 convention by once again welcoming each of you in
the Master’s name. May God place the hand of His blessing upon all of us as we gather here during these days to
do the work of the Lord. I do hope that during the course
of our convention I will have the privilege of greeting many
of you personally. For nothing pleases me more than to become personally acquainted with my brothers and sisters
in Christ from all across our synod, our full-time church
workers, the laity, and their families.
In the previous two parts of my report to the Synod, I
dealt with a variety of issues currently facing our church
body and our society in general. In part III, I will try not to
repeat myself on these various issues unless I feel it is absolutely necessary to expand on what I have already shared
with you in parts I and II.
Rather, in this section of the President’s report, I would
genuinely like to focus our attention on two words. They
are Faithfulness and Outreach. I would like to use the
150th anniversary of our church body as a direction-setter
for my remarks in connection with “Faithfulness,” and then
I would like to use the “3/10 Emphasis” that I have been
briefly referring to across our church these past several
months in connection with the subject of “Outreach.”

Faithfulness: the Challenge
and Opportunity
First of all, let me spend a little time visiting with you
about the 150th anniversary which our Synod celebrated
this past year under the theme “Sent Forth By God’s Blessing.” Under the excellent leadership of Dr. Karl Barth and
his associates, plus outstanding leadership at the District
and congregational level, we had a great 150th anniversary
celebration. For this we have every reason to praise God.
Now, anniversaries such as this are a good time for looking both back, and forward. As we look back, one doesn’t
have to look twice to see how fantastically we, as a church
body, have been blessed over the past 150 years. There are
so many blessings that could be listed in this connection.
There is simply no way that one could even come close to
mentioning them all. And certainly not to be overlooked in
that listing is the way in which God has preserved among
us the truth of His Holy Word—and a clear commitment on
the part of our church body to remain a strong confessional
Lutheran church, with all that that implies.
The Need for Continuing Faithfulness
But that leads me to a second thought in this connection. I might even call it a question. Do we need to give increased attention at the synodical, District, and congregational levels to being and remaining that kind of a church
as we move into the future? Well, let me answer that ques-

tion with a few statistics recently gathered in a Lutheran
Brotherhood survey. Members of congregations of our
Synod were asked a number of questions of a doctrinal and
theological nature, to see how they understood the Word of
God and that which our church teaches. In many respects,
the answers they gave were shocking. Let me share a few of
the statements and responses with you.
The persons surveyed were asked to respond to this
statement, “Only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their
Savior can go to heaven.” Thirty percent of those who responded disagreed, said they probably disagreed, or were
not sure about their answer to that statement. Think of it!
Nearly one-third of those asked either disagreed, or were
unsure, about whether or not a person is saved only by
faith in Jesus Christ. When asked to respond to the statement, “Although there are many religions in the world,
most of them lead to the same God,” the response was even
more shocking. Fifty-seven percent of our people indicated
they either agreed, or probably agreed, that most religions
lead people to the same God. When asked whether or not
they agreed that from birth we are sinful, 37 percent said
that they did not believe that this is the case—37 percent of
the members of our own congregations did not believe in
original sin. Now these are some pretty sobering statistics.
And to all this we could add other equally troubling survey results. And then there are those who say that we as a
church body do not need to be so concerned about being and
remaining strongly in the Word, as if this is something that
could simply go without saying. I can assure you that if the
day ever comes when we think we can simply take for
granted the importance of being and remaining faithful to
that which the Holy Scriptures teach, it will not be long before we find ourselves walking away from our theological
commitments and sliding down the path toward the same
sort of vague and confused theology that, sadly, we notice in
so much of modern American Christianity today. The very
fact that within our own Synod there is this type of confusion over some of the most fundamental teachings of the
Christian faith, as indicated by the survey results I just
shared, should alert us to a genuine need to reemphasize
faithfulness to the Word of God among us, and to the truths
of that Word as we confess them in our Lutheran Confessions, the Book of Concord.
Catechesis—Teaching the Christian Faith
Now what do we do with these sorts of statistics? Well,
rather than stand around wringing our hands about this
type of information, or simply giving up and saying, “Well,
that’s just the way it seems to be going in the world today,”
we need at all levels—and I am going to repeat that—we
need at all levels within our church, to reemphasize those
biblical truths with which we as a church body have been
blessed down through the years, and then stand tall for
those truths.
It is in this connection also that I have continually been
emphasizing catechesis—let me repeat that word—catechesis—all across our beloved church body. And what do I
mean by “catechesis”? Catechesis is the ongoing teaching,
learning, and reviewing of the truths of God’s Word. Catechesis is the learning and relearning of that which we be-