LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1979, Page 72

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

72 PRESIDENT’S REPORT

worships science as its god but is moving in the
direction of secular humanism. We are hearing much
more about the spirit world, about transcendence, about
the fact that there has to be something behind all of this.
It is a new religion. It is not Christian, but one cannot
help but feel that perhaps we are standing today where
St. Paul did at Mars’ Hill when he said to those secular
humanists of the first century, “I perceive that youarea
very religious people.”

Here is enormous opportunity, even if the world lasts
only 20 more years, for bringing the message of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ (who in many ways was the most
human of all people who ever walked the earth in that
He was God made flesh) to a world which is so desper-
ately crying out in its frustration and despair. I have
never spent a week in which it was brought more
forcibly to my attention that the church has the an-
swers, that Christ is the Answer, that the world needs
Him desperately, and that nobody is going to know
about Him unless we tell them. You cannot count on the
scientists or the secular humanists or the atheists or the
communists or the economists or whoever it may be; but
you have to count on the church. We have great
resources, great talents, and unbelievable opportunities.

The Doors Are Open

As this convention opens, we have behind us a long
and difficult controversy. We have before us a
$40,000,000 appeal for funds, open doors all over the

world for mission expansion and recruitment and pre-
paration of church workers. We are entering what I
believe can be a golden age for The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod as we enter into the decade of the ’80s
and look forward to the turn of the millennium in the
year 2000. We must be doing some very forward thinking
and planning. We must be dedicating ourselves as we
never have before to being about our Father’s business
and entering the doors which He continually opens to
us.

There are two ingredients for the achievement of this
that are absolutely imperative, and the first is that we
be reconciled among ourselves. A great deal of healing
and reconciliation has taken place, but it needs to be
brought to an even higher level. One of Luther’s favorite
Bible texts was the story of the paralyzed man who was
brought to Jesus and let down through the roof lying on
his pallet looking up into the face of Jesus. When Jesus
looked down at him, He read his heart and He read the
foremost prayer in his heart. The man did not ask for
physical healing. But Jesus spoke to him the most
healing words that can ever be spoken by anyone. He
said to him, “Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are
forgiven you.” These are words that must come from the
hearts and lips of all of us—toward one another, toward
all who we feel have wronged us, and toward a world
which needs to hear these words more than any other
words that can ever be spoken. Likewise we must ask
forgiveness of those we have hurt. The greatest need of

The cares of office