LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 108

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108

CONVENTION ESSAYS AND REACTIONS

What did the believers in Ephesus do at first? They believed, by the power of the Holy Spirit, what Paul urged
them to believe, “For it is by grace you have been saved,
through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift
of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph.
2:8–9). But note that Paul added: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which
God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10). And
again Paul writes, “prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all
reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of
God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of
the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:12–13).
The history of the LCMS indicates a healthy balance of
faith and works, of doctrinal integrity and outreach resulting in Kingdom expansion. Our current picture indicates
that we continue to see faith among our people, for which we
thank and praise God, but outreach is not sufficiently apparent, for which we repent and ask God for Gospel renewal.
This presentation will focus on Gospel motivation for
telling the Good News about Jesus to those around you
when you return home. Gospel motivation involves receiving before giving or, as Luther put it so well, we are all beggars. Beggars stand at the foot of the cross and receive undeserved grace and mercy. Beggars come home from far
countries asking to be accepted as slaves and receive the
full inheritance from a gracious heavenly Father. We are
all receivers before givers, hearers before tellers.
Please allow me to share a story about motivation
through a brief series of events that happened to me as a
soldier in Vietnam in 1967. One of the positive things about
serving during the Vietnam conflict was the opportunity to
be involved in what was called the “Civic Action Program”
(CAP). This program involved military personnel working
to help Vietnamese civilians improve their lives.
I was assigned to an army construction battalion, and
we were to help 300 families living in Da Minh, a refugee
village located about 18 miles north of Saigon near Ben
Hoa. Some good-hearted Christians in the Seattle area donated money for building materials for a school in Da Minh.
Our engineer soldiers provided the equipment, and villagers joined them in providing labor. Our battalion commander ordered all equipment and personnel back to our
base camp by dark every day. During the day, it was safe to
be in the village. But at night the enemy controlled the five
miles of road between Da Minh and our base camp.
Just before dark one day, I became painfully aware that
we did not have a large enough vehicle to tow a very large
generator back to the base camp. There was just enough
time to take the soldier work team back in the jeeps, but
not enough time to return with something big enough for
the generator. As team leader for the project, I signed for
the equipment that we hauled out each day.
To sign for something in the army is to own it until returned. I had no idea of the dollar value of the generator,
but I did not intend to find out. I sent the team back to
camp and then hunkered down underneath the generator
for the night.
As I lay there with my three weapons—one rifle and two
handguns—it became very dark and I became very scared.
200l Convention Proceedings

I began to question in my mind my decision and the potential
outcome. What if the enemy came after the equipment? Was
I prepared to kill someone for a piece of steel? What if the
enemy turned out to be someone in the village of Da Minh
who couldn’t resist the temptation to turn a huge profit?
I had been teaching children in this village as well as
helping build the school. The village priest had heard of a
bounty on my head, placed there by our enemies and of
such an amount that it would have been very tempting to
the average Vietnamese. It seemed the enemy found me a
threat. They knew that part of the purpose of the civic action program was to win villages over to our side and away
from the Viet Cong.
As I lay there in the dark, I tried to think like the
enemy. What would be the most profitable—towing and
selling a very large generator on the black market or delivering my ears and dog tags to enemy headquarters in exchange for the bounty money? My fear took on new depth
when I remembered that one of the Roman Catholic priests
of Da Minh had refused to work with the communists. They
simply cut off his head and displayed it on a post in the
middle of the village for a week. This gave rise to my greatest fear: What if the enemy forced one or more of the children from my English classes to come after me?
For the first half-hour after dark, I questioned what I
would do, given the potential options. For the next halfhour, I questioned the draft, the army, and my sanity. It
was also a time of intense prayer. About an hour after dark,
I heard the sound of an army jeep approach the village. It
came in slowly, drove along the edge of the construction
site, and stopped in front of the generator. The vehicle contained two soldiers. One was the driver, and the other was
the battalion commander.
The commander looked down at me lying there in the
grass under the generator and said, “Sergeant Mulder, I appreciate the fact that you signed for this piece of equipment, and I do appreciate your sense of responsibility. But
there is something else you should know, Soldier. I signed
for you and you are more important than all the equipment
the army owns. Get in the jeep, son; we are going home.”
We made it back to base camp safely that night. The
next day, the generator was exactly where we had left it.
The experience left me with a deep admiration for a servant leader. A battalion has 1,000 people, and we were full
strength with the arrival of new soldiers to replace our casualties. This means that our commander had 999 of his
soldiers safely behind barbed wire that night in 1967, but
he had one who was potentially lost, and that was not acceptable for this leader of men. I am convinced that the battalion commander would have driven out to Da Minh alone
and not even risked a driver if he could have found the village alone.
About three weeks later, the battalion commander approached me with a request. Would I be willing to lead a
patrol into enemy territory and at the same time be the
personal bodyguard for a professor from a university in California? This professor was a geologist and he had been contracted by the army to research the possibility of using
molten lava, from an old volcano site, in place of rock for