Pastor’s Page
Volume 12 Week 44
Six Objectives for Churches
of the Synod!
LC-MS President Shares Hopes
and Dreams for Churches Like Mt Calvary
God tells His people to remember the past, but for a specific reason. Moses and Joshua called the people to remembrance at a critical time in their history: their crossing into the Promised Land! They were entering a new era of mission and witness to the nations of the world in that critical land at the crossroads of the ancient world.
God placed us here to share the saving love of Christ in our community. As our 75th Anniversary celebration comes to an end, I hope we will use our reflection on the past to drive us forward to greater service and sacrifice for the Lord’s kingdom in the future.
Dr. Jerry Kieschnick, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, recently spoke to 750 pastors, our circuit counselors and district leaders, and offered “six hopes, dreams and objectives” for our Church body as we move into the future. They are so good, I thought I’d share them with you, and add a few comments of my own!
On To 100!
Dr.
Kieschnick’s first point of focus for the Church reads, “Keeping the main thing the main thing.
Our Lord’s mission to reach lost people for Christ is and must remain
the central focus of our life and our reason for existence.”
Most churches close before reaching our age and those that do reach seventy-five years have generally stopped growing. There are reasons why, and our Board has recently committed to a study to determine which factors of plateaued or dying congregations apply to us.
We seem to have reached a certain size at which it is difficult to manage further growth. Part of our problem is attitudinal. Our leaders will be asking if we’re keeping the main thing the main thing, or if we are only committed to sharing Christ’s love with one another.
God is always at work where His gospel of salvation in Christ is proclaimed. Many of us are encouraged that with faith, prayer, obedience and boldness, we can break through any barriers to growth and reach more and more people in our community with Christ’s saving love.
I strongly believe that as great as our past has been, our brightest days are still ahead! Dr. Kieschnick is right. We have one central reason to exist as a congregation in this community, to reach lost people for Christ. His second point tells is what to do.
Hope
#2 is, “Restoring health and vitality in
congregations of Synod by helping congregational leaders refocus significant
effort and reallocate adequate resources for taking the Gospel beyond the four
walls of sanctuary and classroom.”
Here he has identified a natural tendency of older, established congregations. Most growth by reaching out, winning new souls for Christ happens in churches less than twenty years old. Once a church reaches a size that is sustainable, the mission fervor to reach out is replaced by a concern to care for the members, families and children who already belong to the church.
On test is to examine the monthly calendar of the church to see how many activities are directed toward the needs of the members and how many are directed outward to those “beyond the four walls of sanctuary and classroom.”
The call to “restore health and vitality” should be a little bit frightening to us at Mount Calvary, because it introduces the word we all fear and dread: “change.” But I’m encouraged by our history and the many changes this church has made over the years. Let’s follow in the footsteps of those who walked boldly into the unknown for the sake of establishing this congregation in order to impact our community and many more new people with Christ’s love! Why not?
Dr. K’s third hope is that we will continue to focus on, “Proper and powerful preaching of Law and Gospel and meaningful application of God’s Word to the human condition.” Every revitalization and era of renewal in the Church has centered on the rediscovery of the transforming power of the Word of God. It’s time to dust off the Bible’s, dig into the narratives of God’s call and challenge to His people of the past to live for Jesus, and to follow as past generations have.
The difference a church makes for the kingdom of God is directly related to the way in which they study, learn, believe and obey the Word of the Lord. Our future will be driven by the spiritual growth and maturity of our current members, as the love of Christ, revealed in His Word, transforms us from ordinary people into extraordinary servants!
“Church Workers!”
Objective
four calls us to the, “Recruitment,
training, compensation, and retention of professional church workers to meet
the needs of the coming years, including our Ablaze! challenge to begin 2,000 new
missions by 2017.”
This past year, two of our members began service in God’s kingdom as professional church workers, Pastor Aaron Zuch, and Abby Dittmer, a counselor for Young Life. Pray for them. Get acquainted with the adventurous and faithful field education students from the seminary who have answered God’s call, and encourage the youth of our congregation to follow in the footsteps of people like Abby and Aaron and others before them.
In the next ten years, half of our pastors will reach retirement age. God is calling. Will we be sending?
“Stewardship and Ministry!”
The last two of
Jerry Kieschnick’s dreams are very practically oriented goals for the
church. They are, “Providing stewardship education, not merely for the sake of generating
sufficient revenue for funding the mission at all levels, but also for the sake
of the spiritual health and vitality of individual Lutheran Christians,”
and “Integration of doctrine and
practice. While our Synod enjoys great
solidarity in doctrinal formulations, we must continue to attend to the
difficulties and disagreements we have over how those formulations are put into
practice.”
God has placed His treasures into the hands of His people. Our calling as we move out into our community in days ahead is to use the gifts He’s given, our biblically sound doctrine of the good news of Christ, our treasures of time and talent and material resources, and our creativity and passion to put what we know into practice, that others will join us in giving praise and thanks to God for life and salvation!
We don’t know if Christ will return before seventy-five more years pass, seventy-five months or even seventy-five more days. But rejoicing in the gifts of faith, hope and love, let’s dedicate ourselves to writing new history right into the hearts and lives of our neighbors as we tell the good news of Jesus, and welcome them into the family of God.
I believe our greatest days lie still in the future!