LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1979, Page 184

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184 LATE REPORTS AND OVERTURES

Keeping-in-Touch Materials

A new poster was produced last year and sent to all
congregations. It carries the message “The love of God
reaches out to his people in military service... and so
does yours.”

Every other month 35,000 copies of the publication
Lutherans in Step continue to be made available to the
LCMS Armed Forces Commission for mailing to the
Synod’s service personnel and to AELC, ALC, and LCA
congregations for mailing to their service members. The
publication carries brief items about what is happening
in U.S. Lutheranism and lots of inspirational touches.
Each issue also carries an updated roster intended as a
referral tool. It lists all active-duty chaplains and
military contact pastors, plus the places and times of
Lutheran worship and Communion services on military
installations Stateside and overseas.

Among the tracts, pamphlets, prayer books, and
other devotional materials supplied by the division to
congregations and military personnel, its most widely
circulated item is a calendar card. A total of 211,092
cards were distributed in 1978.

Division of Mission and Ministry

The basic bylaw mandate for the Division of Mission
and Ministry states that it is “to assist the participating
church bodies by providing means for furthering co-
operation in study, planning and program development
in their mission activities and in their activities ad-
dressed to the social needs of individuals and groups.”
Its current programs concentrate on national mission
planning, regional mission planning, social ministry
planning, specialized pastoral care and clinical educa-
tion, immigration and refugee services, national youth
agency relationships, and American Indian services.
Administrative support is given to a self-governing
unit, the Lutheran Housing Coalition.

A recent change involved another related unit, the
National Hispanic Lutheran Assembly. It was organ-
ized in November 1972 and ceased operations the end of
February 1978 primarily because of the development of
separate Hispanic caucuses in the LCMS, ALC, and
LCA. Desired cooperation is now being handled by a
Consulting Committee on Hispanic Ministry made up
of representatives from these caucuses.

Harold Haas left the position of DMM executive
director the end of May 1977 to become president of
Tressler-Lutheran Service Associates in Harrisburg,
Pa. Donald H. Larsen became executive director the
following July, returning to the division after four years
as head of the Office of Research, Planning, and
Development. The social ministry planning desk, va-
cant since early 1977, was filled last summer by Richard
W. Rhyne, formerly an administrative assistant to the
president of the LCA’s North Carolina Synod. In a
restructuring of the Department of Immigration and
Refugee Services to meet its growing program, Kenneth
J. Stumpf, an LCMS pastor who has been with the
department since June 1977, became associate director

for administration, and an associate director for church
and agency relationships is being sought.

National Mission Planning

Understandings of and emphases for carrying out
the mission mandate, “go and make disciples,” in the
U.S. were shared by mission specialists and national
and regional leaders of the LCMS, ALC, and LCA ata
major conference in September 1977 in Overland Park,
Kans. The 175 participants listened to each other, tried
to reexamine their own mission priorities on the basis of
what was heard, and pledged to seek ways to augment
and complement each other’s mission strategies. Roger
W. Leenerts of the LCMS’s Board for Missions pre-
sented the Synod’s mission mandate, citing revitalizing
existing churches, planting new churches, reaching
minority groups, intensifying urban ministry,
responding to social concerns, expanding blind and
deaf ministry, and equipping the laity as areas of
concentration.

Some of the “theses” that emerged from the mission
conference have been on the agenda of the sessions each
January, April, and September of the church bodies’
national mission and ministry executives. Other items
of current concern are publishing a Hispanic hymnal,
holding a study seminar on “Black Theology—A World
Perspective,” and Lutheran involvement in and fi-
nancing of the Joint Strategy and Action Committee,
which brings together the national mission agencies of
the major Protestant denominations in a group of task
forces.

A limited consultation on Lutheran approaches to
ministry among Asian persons living in the U‘S. took
place in June 1978 in Chicago. The 14 participants
called for the formation of an Inter-Lutheran Con-
sulting Committee on Asian-American Ministry, which
was to take place this May in San Francisco. Principles
of coordination and strategies for ministry were to be
spelled out and the city’s Japanese, Chinese, and
Philippine communities visited.

After a four-year experiment in having seven theo-
logically trained persons as managers of apartment
projects, the Inter-Lutheran Apartment Ministry Task
Force evaluated this effort and voted to end it. A second
model under development since 1975 has endeavored to
strengthen congregationally based ministries to apart-
ment residents through one-day workshops for pastors
and lay leaders in Overland Park, Kans.; Washington,
D.C.; Seattle; Atlanta; Rockford, I].; and Santa Monica,
Calif. The yet-to-becompleted evaluation looks “very
positive” and shows an enthusiastic response to this
approach.

Lutheran involvement in the National Farm Worker
Ministry faces expansion. The workers have struggled
in California to overcome powerlessness and to achieve
a life of self-determination and new hope by organizing
the United Farm Workers of America. This struggle is
now spreading to Texas, Florida, and several states in
the Midwest—and the ministry is accompanying it.

One aspect of inter-Lutheran nonmetro ministry is

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