LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1979, Page 81

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OTHER PRESENTATIONS

Greetings of the President of The American Lutheran Church

Needed—Believers

The American Lutheran Church greets The Luther-
an Church—Missouri Synod in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, through whom we share in the hope of
glory.

We are grateful for the many ways by which we
share life in Christ and in His church. We rejoice in our
shared ministries on campuses, in the military services,
in social services, in mission planning, in world relief, in
a great many congregations in this country and around
the world. We rejoice in the fact that our people have no
difficulty at all in forming new congregations that
include members of our various Lutheran churches. The
shared Scriptures, Confessions, catechisms, hymns,
and prayers make them unidentifiable by synodical
background. They share a common faith and a similar,
though not identical, history. As a result there are
thousands of congregations that include an undiffer-
entiated race of people from our various Lutheran
church bodies. We believe that is as it should be, a work
of unity and maturity. So we thank God for the many
works of unity and ministry in Christ that exist between
and among us.

There is a sense in which The American Lutheran
Church does not “need” the Missouri Synod. In the
same sense you do not “need” usin the ALC. Weare big
churches, and we can get along all right going our
separate ways.

There is a much deeper sense, however, in which we
need each other very badly. God has made us for each
other. He has called us and baptized us into His
believing family. He makes us one in this and asks us to
live as brothers and sisters. He asks us to display family
unity, not sibling rivalry. We are not meant to keep each
other at arm’s length, quarrelsome and contentious. He
has made us, the LCMS, the ALC, and the other
Lutheran churches in this land, confessional siblings.
We are of one mind in heartfelt commitment to the
doctrine of the faith, in justification by grace through
faith, in holding fast the inspiration of the Scriptures,
and espousing the universal priesthood of believers. We
are recognizably members of the Lutheran Christian
family, and we need to express our shared family
heritage. God asks us to express our oneness in faith
and mission. That is “need” enough to impel us to do so.

At the end of the Gospel of John there is a passage:
“These are written that you may believe. .. .” There is
great need for believers today. There is great need for
believers in God, the almighty God who through Jesus
Christ has reached out to reclaim a lost and condemned
human family. There is great need to believe that “Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Heinvites us to
share His life here and hereafter. There is great need for
us to stand up and say, “We believe in God and in His
Christ. We believe in Christ in the midst of life and in the

81

Dr. David Preus, President, The American Lutheran Church

presence of death, in good days and bad, in plenty and
in want.”

There is need for believers in God’s kingdom. The
uncertainties of continued human existence have never
been more obvious. The Buck Rogers visions of a soon-
to-arrive scientific utopia have given way to apocalyptic
visions of meaningless final destruction. This gener-
ation knows it could be the last generation, not as an
item of faith but as a matter of grim fact. As a result
there is a great deal of uncertainty, a sense that
something is wrong, that a sense of direction is needed.
That is not a totally new situation in human history,
and our answers to it are not new. The Christian answer
is the same today, yesterday, and forever. God’s king-
dom is not dependent on anything but God. We trust His
promises that neither human hands nor satanic forces
can damage His kingdom.

Beliefin that kingdom enabled Paul to say, “To me to
live is Christ and to die is gain.” It enabled Dr. Martin
Rinckart to bury thousands of parishioners and all the
members of his own family as they succumbed to the
black plague, and then sit down and write the hymn
“Now Thank We All Our God.” It enabled Dietrich
Bonhoeffer to quietly go about sharing the Word of hope
with his fellow prisoners though he knew the Nazi
guards were on the way to take him to be shot. Belief in
that kingdom has enabled millions of ordinary Chris-
tians to face the uncertainties of human existence with
confidence.