LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 107

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2. GREETINGS FROM THE SECRETARY OF THE ELCA
Grace and peace be with you in the name of God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I bring you official greetings on behalf of Presiding
Bishop Mark Hanson and the 4.8 million members in more
than 10,000 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America. I am grateful for this opportunity to be
with you at this 63rd Regular Convention of The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod.
As some of you may recall, I have served as secretary of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for the past
20 years. My current term ends on October 31 of this year.
I have chosen to retire from office at that time. My successor will be elected at the forthcoming Tenth Churchwide
Assembly of the ELCA. The voting members for that assembly will gather in Chicago, August 6–11.
In being mindful of the elections of the ELCA assembly, I
know of the significant decisions that you have made here in
Houston on behalf of the clergy, members, congregations,
and districts of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Congratulations especially to the Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick on
his first-ballot reelection as president.
I take this opportunity to express in your presence my
gratitude for the privilege throughout these past two
decades of serving as a member of the Committee on
Lutheran Cooperation. I have done so in recent years with
President Kieschnick, First Vice-President Diekelman, and
Secretary Hartwig. In so doing, I have been grateful for the
constructive opportunities to meet regularly with them and
their predecessors.
With the formation of the ELCA in 1987, the Lutheran
Council in the U.S.A. ceased to exist. At that point, I was
convinced of the need for a systematic, continuing point of
contact between leaders of the ELCA and the LCMS, just as
the Lutheran Council had been a place for communication
between the LCMS and the predecessor church bodies of the
ELCA. So I urged the establishment of the Committee on
Lutheran Cooperation. The meetings of the committee have
been salutary in fostering such ongoing communication and
mutual understanding.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod have very different histories. I suspect that many of the pastors and members of
both the ELCA and the LCMS do not realize that fact. The
ELCA is the result of many mergers throughout the
decades of the 20th century; the LCMS has largely a continuous history since its formation in 1847. Those differing
histories shape the distinctive characteristics of the ELCA
and the LCMS. Therefore, we need to talk. We need to listen. We need to seek understanding.
In that regard, I will give you a preview this morning of
one section of my report in three weeks to the ELCA’s
Churchwide Assembly. In that final report in my role as
secretary, I will say the following to the voting members:
107

I have worked hard in trying to keep as many doors and
windows open as possible between the ELCA and The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The task has not been
easy, and at times the prospects have seemed discouraging.
Yet I remain convinced that, for the sake of clear Lutheran witness in this land, these two church bodies need to work together
in as many ways as possible now and in the years to come.

We need to do so not just for ourselves, but for the sake of
our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren.
There are areas of cooperation that we can treasure together. Those include the support by both the ELCA and the
LCMS of Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and
Refugee Service, and Lutheran Services in America. We engage together as well in the Inter-Lutheran Coordination
Committee for Ministries in Chaplaincy, Pastoral Counseling, and Clinical Education. We also have worked together
over many years in Lutheran Disaster Response.
Our two churches cooperate significantly in undergirding the work of our Lutheran military chaplains. That support of current chaplains as well as the recruitment efforts
for the future is absolutely crucial these days. Within the
past three years, we in the ELCA have lost due to retirements one-fourth of our active-duty chaplains. They have
served conscientiously with personnel of the Air Force,
Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard. Will we as Lutherans yield the pastoral care of our members in the armed
forces only to religious groups who have no understanding
or appreciation of our heritage? I certainly hope not.
Chaplain Mark Schreiber and Chaplain Ted Wuerffel do
superb work in the LCMS Ministry to the Armed Forces
program. So does Chaplain Darrell Morton in the ELCA
2007 Convention Proceedings