LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 4

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4 MISSIONS

Secretary for Campus Ministry is presently heading up a
LCUSA-initiated task force study on the church’s ministry to the
community college.

c. Tri-Lutheran Administration. In the past biennium, two
Missouri Synod Districts— Texas, and California and Nevada—
resolved in their District conventions to plan and administer
their campus ministry program jointly with other Lutherans in
a tri-Lutheran agency.

4. Take My Hands: Medical Work

A Filipino doctor making an incision at Immanuel Lutheran
Hospital in Eket, Nigeria: a medical assistant binding up an ax
wound in the Highlands of New Guinea; an Indian radiologist
holding up an X-ray and teaching a new group of para-profes-
sional medical workers in Ambur how to read it; a nurse gently
examining a new-born baby in the Mountain Province of the
Philippines or in inner-city Denver—these are but a few of the
people who, ‘moved by the impulse of Christ’s love,” have asked
the Lord to “take” their medically trained ‘thands” and use
them to proclaim His gracious, healing care.

a. Medical Mission Anniversaries. 1973 marks two signifi-
cant anniversaries—the 60th anniversary of the beginning of
our church's ministry of health and healing and the 50th anniver-
sary of Bethesda Hospital in Ambur, India, the first hospital
established by our Synod overseas. President J. A. O. Preus
attended special anniversary celebrations in India in February.

b. Enabling Friends. October 1972 marked the 25th anniver-
sary of an important auxiliary organization, the Lutheran Medi-
cal Mission Association. The LMMA has done much to make the
members of the Synod aware of their personal, congregational
and synodical resposibilities for service and witness to the sick
and lonely. LMMA members and chapters continue to offer
specific help with the recruitment of medical mission personnel,
the provision of medical supplies and equipment, and scholar-
ship funds for 27 North American and national students pre-
paring themselves (in medical school or through postgraduate
work) for medical mission service with Synod and its sister
churches abroad. Some local chapters have helped to initiate
inner-city medical clinics, supplying them with medicine,
financial assistance and volunteer staffing, while the Chicago
LMMA Chapter is presently helping finance a medical mis-
sionary in Hong Kong.

The Wheat Ridge Foundation is another key supporter of
Lutheran medical work. After having helped establish or
modernize tuberculosis treatment programs in India, Hong
Kong, Japan, and Nigeria, the Foundation has made possible
several broad ventures into community health, preventative
medicine and health education. These efforts have given new
direction to existing mission hospitals and have permitted the
development of comprehensive health-care programs in New
Guinea, Guatemala, Nigeria, and Ghana. The assistance given
by Wheat Ridge to Synod’s healing mission (since 1954) totals
nearly $3,000,000.

The Synod was first enabled to begin medical mission work
in 1913 when a group of dedicated women responded to a plea
for financial help from India missionaries. Since its founding
in 1942, the Lutheran Women's Missionary League has made
numerous medical missions endeavors possible through its
generous grants—most recently, in February, a $40,000 grant
for a new leprosy wing at Bethesda Hospital, Ambur, India.

c. Response to Change. Like all other ministries of the church,
Synod’s healing mission endeavors to remain faithful and at-
tentive to the changeless commands of a faithful Lord in the
changing environment of the 20th century.

A changing environment: Without exception, less affluent
nations (and national Lutheran churches working in them) now
feel the need to direct and manage their own medical services.
We welcome this trend, even though it demands flexibility,
much mutual trust and confidence in the Holy Spirit as we are
forced to find new avenues to serve people in need. In New
Guinea, for instance, we have been participating in the develop-
ment of a national health scheme in which government hospitals,
church-related medical programs and private practitioners will
be expected to work in concert. Similar developments can be
expected in more affluent countries also.

Another example of change: Health services in the West and
Christian medical work in developing countries have alike
become highly institutionalized captives of mushrooming tech-
nology. As a result, treating a disease — rather than a person with

a disease—tends to attract dominant focus. Christian medical
service in developing countries recognizes this danger, and
remedial steps are being taken to deal with it.

d. Missionary Medical Emergency Reserve Fund. The Board
for Missions has the responsibility to respond to missionary
health emergencies (e.g., serious and prolonged illness, ac-
cident, emergency travel of patient and family —sometimes with
necessary escort, unexpected death while enroute, etc.). But
faced with limited funds, the Board has had to seek special
financial assistance from the Synod’s Board of Directors this
past biennium to cover large medical bills incurred by several
missionaries with serious or terminal illnesses. The Board for
Missions, therefore, endorses the resolution being brought to

the New Orleans convention by the Synod’s Council for Chris- -

tian Medical Work — asking that the Synod authorize the estab-
lishment of a $75,000 Emergency Reserve Fund to be used for
the unexpected major health expenses of overseas missionary
personnel.

5. Take My Hands: Ministries of Mercy

“Moved by the impulse of God’s love,” many Christlike
“hands” at home and abroad are witnessing to Christ by serving
their neighbors in need.

a. “As you have opportunity.”” Missouri Synod congrega-
tions in North America and mission-related sister churches
overseas are involved in a wide range of social ministry or ser-
vice projects. Vocational schools in new housing areas of San
Paulo, Brazil, where there are no other schools; English in-
struction for youth in Japan and for Spanish-speaking people
in the U.S.; day care centers in urban America and kinder-
garten or nursery schools in large East Asian cities; adult
literacy efforts in Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States;
recreational programs for seamen in port at Houston and for the
“‘back-stretch” people who walk and groom the horses at Arling-
ton Park race track in Chicago; sewing classes and community
improvement projects in Korea, India, and inner-city Kansas
City—these are but a few examples of how concerned wor-
shiping communities see needs and give a hand in meeting them,
proclaiming the Gospel in deed as well as word.

b. Hands to Help in Poverty and Disaster. In Nigeria, Guate-
mala, the Philippines, and New Guinea, the church is involved
in agricultural ministries and other economic development proj-
ects helping people to help themselves. In Nigeria, for example,
funds from Synod’s Board of Social Ministry and World Relief
and other above-budget gifts have enabled 40 families to each
receive 20 acres on which to farm and be taught modern meth-
ods of irrigation, fertilization, etc., as they farm. Planners anti-
cipate benefits to multiply as other Nigerians visit this Lutheran
Church of Nigeria demonstration project, try new ways and
become self-sufficient.

The Missouri Synod, through its Board of Social Ministry and
World Relief and through the generous gifts of individuals and
congregations, also helped provide emergency relief this past
biennium in war-ravaged Bangladesh, in flood-stricken South
Dakota and Pennsylvania, and in the famine-hit Highlands of
New Guinea. In each of these instances, local congregations
and pastors (or missionaries and national church personnel
closest to these disasters) put their hands and hearts to work in
Christian concern. Their efforts invariably included the verbali-
zation of the comforting message of God’s hope in Christ —a hope
attested to as Christians, led by the Spirit, gave concrete ex-
pression to Christ’s love for all people.

“Take My Feet...”

“How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!”
(Rom. 10:15, Is. 52:7)

There are some “beautiful feet’’ overseas and in North
America. They are the feet of men and women of every nation-
ality who are following in the footsteps of Him who in His very
person was God’s Good News. The “beautiful feet’? of His
ambassadors travel by plane (in remote areas of New Guinea
and the Philippines), boat (along the coast of Guatemala), bus,
train, Land-Rover, Jeep, car, motorcycle, bicycle, and on foot.
Missouri Synod missionaries and national Christians overseas,
and pastors, teachers, and laymen from Alaska to the Gulf of
Mexico in North America carry the Good News of Jesus Christ
and of His beautiful nail-scarred feet, and seek to win a growing
number of believers all over the world.