Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1950, Page 28

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28 Proceedings of the Forty-First Convention,

and that no man shall set on them to hurt them.” Proclaiming His
Word in its truth and purity, they know that His Word shall not
return unto Him void, but it shall accomplish that which He pleases,
and it shall prosper in the thing whereto He sent it. Is.55:11. We
commend all our laborers in the home and foreign fields to the
tender care of a loving Father in heaven and pray that He may
abide with them and their families with His grace and protection.

The second half of the 20th century lies before us. Great oppor-
tunities are offered us for the spreading of the glorious Gospel,
of which Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. With the power
of the press, the phenomenal developments of radio and television,
the swiftness of transportation on land and sea and in the sky,
the modernizing of roads through bush and jungle, and the achieve-
ments of enterprise to aid us; with the evidence that mission work
is not an experiment, but a success which has received the seal
of Heaven’s approbation; with proofs at hand that God’s Word
is most efficacious, as indicated by the thousands of accessions of
converts, and with the promise of the adorable Savior: “Lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” the Church
must “put on her strength” in proclaiming the news of salvation
through Christ to peoples everywhere; she must go out into the
world and call men “from the lanes and byways, from winding roads
and crowded highways,” and she must not rest “Till each remotest
nation Has learned Messiah’s name.”

This is the appointed time, the hour for duty and for victory.
May we faithfully and courageously fulfill the one and, by the
grace of God, achieve the other.

Respectfully submitted,

THE MISSIONARY BOARD OF THE
Ev. LutHeran SynopicaL CONFERENCE

Karu Kourtu, Executive Secretary

THE ALABAMA FIELD
By the Rev. Walter H. Ellwanger, Superintendent

Mission work by the Synodical Conference was begun in the
Alabama field in 1916, when the now sainted Rev. N. J. Bakke was
sent by the Missionary Board in answer to the Macedonian call
through Miss Rosa J. Young. She had been laboring under extreme
difficulties in her school at Rosebud to lift up her people born in
abject poverty and ignorance and groping in spiritual blindness.
Through Booker T. Washington she was directed to ask the Lu-
therans for financial assistance. The Missionary Board, then under
the direction of the Rev. Christopher F. Drewes, saw that the great
and sole need of Negroes in Alabama was the Gospel of Jesus
Christ in its full Scriptural truth and purity. It pleased God,
therefore, when Missionary Bakke was sent, to grant a Pentecostal
ingathering. On Palm Sunday and on Easter Sunday, 1916, 58 per-
sons were baptized and 70 were confirmed at Rosebud. This was
the beginning of the Lutheran Church, Synodical Conference, in
the heart of the Black Belt in Alabama. The growth of the Church,
under God’s blessings, in this‘mission territory is quite generally
known through one of the most appealing mission books, Light in
the Dark Belt, by Miss Rosa J. Young.