Journal of Lutheran Mission | March 2017

Journal of Lutheran

Mission March 2017 | Vol. 4 | No. 1

The Journal of Lutheran Mission Contributing Editors David Berger, Emeritus, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Rev. Dr. Steve Briel, chairman, Board for National Mission, LCMS Rev. Allan Buss, parish pastor, Belvidere, Ill. Rev. Roberto Bustamante, faculty, Concordia Seminary, Buenos Aires Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver III, director, LCMS Church Relations Rev. Thomas Dunseth, director of deaf ministry, Lutheran Friends of the Deaf, New York Rev. Nilo Figur, area counselor for Latin America and the Caribbean, Lutheran Hour Ministries Rev. Roosevelt Gray, director, LCMS Black Ministry Rev. Dr. Carlos Hernandez, director, LCMS Hispanic Ministry Rev. Dr. John Kleinig, emeritus lecturer, Australian Lutheran College Rev. Ted Krey, regional director, Latin America and the Caribbean, LCMS Deaconess Dr. Cynthia Lumley, principal, Westfield Theological House, Cambridge Rev. Dr. Gottfried Martens, parish pastor, Berlin Rev. Dr. Naomichi Masaki, faculty, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne Rev. Dr. Tilahun Mendedo, president, Concordia College, Selma Rev. Nabil Nour, fifth vice-president, LCMS Rev. Dr. Steve Oliver, LCMS missionary, Taiwan Rev. Dr. Michael Paul, LCMS theological educator to Asia Rev. Roger Paavola, president, LCMS Mid-South District Rev. Dr. Darius Petkunis, rector, Lithuanian Lutheran Seminary Rev. Dr. Andrew Pfeiffer, faculty, Australian Lutheran College Rev. John T. Pless, faculty, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne Rev. Dr. Timothy Quill, faculty, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne Rev. Dr. David Rakotonirina, bishop, Antananarivo Synod of the Malagasy Lutheran Church Rev. Dr. Lawrence Rast, president, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind. Rev. Geoff Robinson, mission executive, Indiana District Rev. Dr. Carl Rockrohr, pastor, Fort Wayne, Ind. Rev. Robert Roethemeyer, faculty, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne Rev. Dr. Brian Saunders, president, LCMS Iowa East District Rev. Dr. Detlev Schultz, faculty, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne Rev. Bernie Seter, chairman, Board for International Mission, LCMS Rev. Kou Seying, associate dean, Urban and Cross-Cultural Ministry, Concordia Seminary, St Louis Rev. Alexey Streltsov, rector, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Siberia Rev. Martin Teigen, parish pastor/Hispanic ministry, North Mankato, Minn.

Rev. Dr. Wilhelm Weber, Jr., rector, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Pretoria, South Africa Rev. John Wille, president, LCMS South Wisconsin District

Executive Editors Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver III, director, LCMS Church Relations Rev. Bart Day, executive director, LCMS Office of National Mission

Rev. John Fale, executive director, LCMS Office of International Mission

From the President

Dear Reader,

G

race and peace in Jesus! We are so very thankful that so many of you opted to access the previous issue of our Journal of Lutheran Mission. The numbers for readership are growing, and we are delighted. (You can read it here.)

Our previous issue included two very significant demographic studies about why the LCMS has been declining for some 45 years. These studies indicated that following the World War II baby boom, the numbers of children born and baptized in the LCMS dropped significantly and have continued to decline. It is clear from the evidence that the size of the demographic challenge is epic. The changes in culture — especially having to do with delayed marriage, living together, postponing childbirth, education of women, etc. — have been seismic. The studies also show that there is no easy way forward. The growth in the LCMS during the postwar period was driven by primarily by childbirth. More children born and baptized meant more adults joining the Synod (i.e., adult confirmations), which meant more confirmations and the like.

As we’ve pointed these things out, I continue to be absolutely amazed at the Synod rumor mill. “Oh, Harrison thinks the answer to our decline of numbers in the LCMS is to have more babies.” As I have repeatedly stated, I doubt very much that any significant change in the childrearing habits of LCMS members will occur or greatly affect future numbers. That said, let me be clear that the Bible does say a lot about families and children, and it’s high time we open our Bibles and have a fresh look at it. By the way, why in the world weren’t these studies on demographics done 25 years ago when all our indicators were already slumping?

For the record, once again (see my convention report in the 2016 Workbook, p. 3) and in the wake of these studies, I will note six important foci that must be taken seriously and acted upon by our pastors, laity, congregations, districts and the Synod. In fact, many of our clergy, laity and congregations are deeply involved in this kind of work already!

1. E vangelism and outreach. Synod’s new personal witnessing program, Every One His Witness, is heating up. Our evangelism expert, the Rev. Mark Wood, is coming and going, training people all across the Synod! See lcms.org/witness-outreach.

2. R e-invigorating congregations. We’ve produced re:Vitality for congregations to have a good look at themselves and move to a better strategic position for outreach to the community. See lcms.org/ revitalization.

3. H ealthy workers. We must all concentrate on making sure our pastors and church workers are forgiven, healthy, supported and engaged in the work of their vocations!

4. I ntentional outreach to immigrant populations.

The LCMS may be overwhelmingly Anglo, but that is changing. It’s changing slowly, but it is changing.

The nations are at our doors. It’s time to help them find a way in. Our schools and universities are gems in this regard!

5. C hurch planting. Synod’s Mission Field: USA church planting-manual and other resources are now available for districts and congregations to use in reaching out to the diverse communities of our nation. See lcms.org/church-planting.

6. R esolution of internal issues that cause conflict.

We’ve come a long, long way. The 2016 convention was unbelievably calm. Resolutions on controverted issues passed overwhelmingly. We’ve got a long way to go. God grant us repentance, patience and fidelity.

This issue of Journal of Lutheran Mission focuses on national mission and includes some of the items I’ve listed here.

In Christ, Pastor Matthew Harrison Presentation of Our Lord, A.D. 2017

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

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Letter to the Editor February 2017

To the Editors,

I

received a copy of the December 2016 Special Edition of the Journal of Lutheran Mission (JLM) and read with curiosity that the major reason for decline in our church body had been discovered and policy decisions to address the decline would come from this research. As an infant-baptized LCMS Lutheran and as an epidemiologist who studies and analyzes patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in populations, I care deeply about health and wellness, especially in the LCMS population. After all, what better “health outcome” than salvation is there?

However, as I read the articles, my curiosity turned to concern. I noticed these significant fallacies in the journal and expand them in the following document.

1.

The inability of the study design(s) to infer causal relationship, but assumption of causality evident throughout the articles in the journal; 2.

An enhanced meaning of the results given to the outcomes of the analysis methods chosen; 3. An inadequate set of variables included in the analysis; 4. A causal pathway model that is in error.

In short, the research evidence presented in the 2016 Special Edition of the Journal of Lutheran Mission does not support the conclusions with the degree of certainty that the authors and the editors have inferred.

The research does present some interesting correlations, includes some large data sets, includes a limited literature review, and can be a starting place for more rigorous study if this topic continues to be an area of interest.

Using scientific, evidence-based approaches is helpful in determining policy,1 However, the Synod should be cautioned in promoting pronatal policies based on these studies as premature and not well supported by the scientific body of evidence.

In His Service, Rebeka Cook, Epidemiologist

1

Julie A. Jacobs, Ellen Jones, Barbara A. Gabella, Bonnie Spring, and Ross C. Brownson, “Tools for Implementing an Evidence-Based Approach in Public Health Practice,” accessed February 6, 2017, https:// www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2012/11_0324.htm.

LIMITS OF INTERPRETATION IN THE JOURNAL OF LUTHERAN MISSION DECEMBER 2016 EDITION Study design cannot determine causation; causation assumed.

In the first article, “A District-Level Examination of Demographic Trends and Membership Trends within LCMS Districts” George Hawley utilized an observational study design, specifically an ecological study design. In the social sciences, an ecological study is considered appropriate for the initial investigation of a causal hypothesis. This type of study can measure correlation, a statistical measure that indicates the extent to which two or more variables fluctuate together. It is not able to determine causation, the name given when one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event.

The correlations seen in the data are not spurious or random. However, even if there is a statistically significant correlation, causation cannot be inferred by this study design. In this first article, the author does not infer causation, but the subsequent article by the same author does; he does so repeatedly and uses anxiety-heightening sentences like, “Failing to halt or even reverse this trend [of the lack of early marriages and larger families] would be disastrous for the LCMS.”2 By the conclusion, he has moved to a full embrace of causality: “The chief cause of numerical decline has been declining birthrate.”3 The writings in the rest of the 2016 December Special Edition continue in line with this assumption that the falling birthrate is the chief/most important cause of the decline in the number of adherents in the LCMS. An ecological study design does not have the ability to determine causation. In addition, the body of evidence around the topic in the rest of the journal is insufficient to infer causation.

My objective in sharing this is not to discredit this early evidence — there is a moderate to low correlation between some birthrates and the percentage of LCMS 2

George Hawley, “The LCMS in the Face of Demographic and Social Change: A Social Science Perspective,” Journal of Lutheran Mission 3, no. 3 (2016): 7.

3

iv

Ibid., 107.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

decline — but to emphasize the limitation of this study design and to advocate for greater caution in crediting the “cause of decline” in the LCMS as being birthrate based on the body of evidence in this journal.

Enhanced meaning given to outcomes The meanings given to the outcomes of the studies contained in this journal are enhanced to a point of inaccuracy and are overstatements of (1) statistical test capability, (2) the strength of the effects of statistical tests, (3) the breadth of topics included in the studies, and (4) the ability to narrow causality to a single variable.

First, the statistical test chosen to analyze the data is a Pearson’s R. A Pearson’s R cannot speak into causal relationships; it measures strength and direction of a relationship. Repeatedly, results have been described with this type of language, “Learn the key factor behind the decline in LCMS membership”4 and “Several demographic reports explain the major reason behind patterns in decline.”5 In the second article, the author uses the phrase, “This paper examines one of the most important causes of the LCMS decline: low fertility among its adherents.” Section 3 of the final journal article states, “One factor has overpowered all other factors in the synod’s numerical decline: A plummeting birth rate …” These statements are prolific in the journal and assume strong causation, but this language is a misrepresentation of the capability of this statistic.

The author mentions this limitation in the first article, 6 however, his subsequent language, the language used to promote the journal, and the direct statement in Section 3 indicates a failure to remember this limitation.

Second, assuming birthrate is causative of decline, the correlation is still not statistically strong enough to drive life-altering policy. Of the limited variables included in this study, the highest correlation — “White [non-Hispanic] Birthrate” — exhibits barely a moderate correlation (r =0.5); there are two implications to this correlation and its use. The confidence implied by the language used in this journal article as it attributes the decline of LCMS membership with birthrate, including white birthrate, on the rate of LCMS decline is an overstatement. The

correlation relationship is not strong; a Pearson’s R with a value of 0.5 is the lowest limit of a moderate correlation, and an r=0.49 would be considered weak correlation.

Subsequently, in interpreting this data and concluding that “The LCMS needs to increase the birthrate” in statistical language reads, “The LCMS needs to increase the white, non-Hispanic birthrate,” a rather ethnocentric statement. Broadening the vocabulary to include “Total Birthrate” or even the “White [non-Hispanic] Married Birthrate” results in relying on data with weak correlation; consequently, the rationale for considering policies based on the strength of these correlations disappears.

Promoting only birthrate as a means to increase family size instead of adoption or embryo adoption, added with the inaccurate interpretation of the regression analysis7 declaring the LCMS “remains the church of a particular ethnic group,”8 support the idea that “non-Hispanic white births” are the births that the LCMS is promoting.

I recommend extreme caution, prudence, and care in the language used in promoting “birthrate.” In summary, the correlations9 between birthrates and decline are not strong, and the association described is a specific relationship between non-Hispanic white birthrate and LCMS decline.

Third, the list of variables included in this analysis is limited to demographic and family formation variables. A way to read the question asked in the study is this, “What is the individual linear relationship between LCMS membership change and (1)white birthrate, (2)white marriage rate, (3)total birthrate, (4) total birthrate, 5) total marriage rate 6 percent white (in a district), (7)white married birthrate, (8) total population change, and (9) median age?” Those are the only variables included in the analysis. Therefore, statements that promote birthrate as the “most important cause” of the decline of the LCMS are in error by being too broad,;“white birthrate” is the “most important”10 of those nine variables, not considering the confounding effect of other variables. A correct statistical reading would be, “Of the nine variables independently considered, the white non-Hispanic birthrate had the 7

4

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod News and Information website, accessed January 31, 2017, https://blogs.lcms.org/2016/journalof-lutheran-mission-december-2016.

5

Email communication received from LCMS Communications infocenter@lcms.org received January 31, 2017.

6

George Hawley, “A District Level Examination of Demographic Trends and Membership Trends within LCMS Districts,” Journal of Lutheran Mission, 3, no. 3 (2016): 2.

Hawley, “Demographic and Social Change,” 71. A correct reading of this regression would be, ”For each additional percent increase of German ethnicity in a county, there’s an additional 0.14 percentage points of LCMS adherents in that county.”

8

Hawley, “Demographic and Social Change,” 46. Again there is a correlation, causation cannot be assumed, and is a statistically inaccurate step.

9

These are correlations, not causal relationships.

10

“Most important” correlation, not “most important” cause.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

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Finally, a Pearson’s R can only consider the effect of a single variable and cannot separate t Finally, a Pearson’s R can only consider the effect of a single variable and cannot separate variable whose presence affects the other variables being studied. The consequence is a test variable whose presence affects the other variables being studied. The consequence is a tes reflect the actual relationship between the variable under investigation and the outcome; thi reflect the actual relationship between the variable under investigation and the outcome; th confounding. A Pearson’s R cannot control for confounding and the effect of the relationsh confounding. A Pearson’s R cannot control for confounding and the effect of the relationsh decline and a decrease in birthrate might be explained away by controlling for the marriage decline and a decrease in birthrate might beGenerosity, explained away by controlling for11the marriage strongest linear correlation with the change variables in percentsection, “Generational ” education explores inwomen a literanot included in the analysis (e.g., an increase in in or an increa 11 variables not 12 included in the analysis (e.g., an increase in education in women or an incre workplace, both variables that are independently correlated with a decrease in birthrates in age of the LCMS population” In statistical layman’s terms,12 ture-review style evangelism (compared only to Southern workplace, both variables that are independently correlated with a decrease in birthrates i implement pronatal policies when a causal relationship has not been established is prematur “Of the nine constructs considered, one at a time, whitepronatal Baptists), conservative implement policiesrural when atrends, causal relationship has values, not beenavailability established is prematu

birthrate increases and decreased most similarly to LCMS of youth programs, presence of early childhood centers, Inadequate set of variables included in the analysis Inadequate set Hispanic of variables included in the analysis membership.” Note that other variables are There explored pastor affordability.

The variables is anin inadequate set ofoutreach, variables and included in the analysis presented but conclusions ab There is an inadequate set of variables included in the analysis presented but conclusions a 13 the journal, but these are done in the method a liter- 13Variables includedto in the journal are all growth a starting place to fit explore areofassumed. include in a population study would under two broad are assumed. Variables to include in a population growth study would fit under two broad those who leave the LCMS and immigration — those who join the LCMS, ature review and sometimes include minor— statistical decline and — provide thought-provoking correlations, but including — those who leave14the LCMS — and immigration — those who join the LCMS, including baptized as infants.

A study objectively seeking to discern the “major cause” of growth or 14 testing; note, too, that the literature review is quite limited the list is incomplete, thetocausation strength baptized as infants.

A study objectively and seeking discern theand “major cause”ofof growth o include variables from both migration and immigration. Variables in the first two articles in in variables considered. While the data set is large andvariables the any cannot be determined by the methods include fromone bothfactor migration and immigration.

Variables in the first two articles i restricted to “immigration” and most specifically to “natural increase.” The third section, “G restricted to “immigration” and most specifically to “natural increase.”

The third section, “ work done in analysis long, the data set and the resulting explores used.inIna summary, the scientific process(compared to narrowonly signifGenerosity,” literature-review style evangelism to Southern B Generosity,” explores in a literature-review style evangelism (compared only Southern B statistical tests used are not robust enough tools to infervalues, icant variablesofforyouth inclusion seems to have omitted.to centers, conservative availability programs, presence of been early childhood Hi conservative values, availability of youth programs, presence of early childhood centers, H pastor affordability. The variables included in the journal are all a starting place to explore more from the data. pastor affordability.

The variables included in the journal are all a starting place to explore A correlations, faulty causal pathway thought-provoking but the list is incomplete, and the causation and strength of Finally, a Pearson’s R can only consider the effect of a thought-provoking correlations, but the list is incomplete, and the causation and strength o cannot be determined by thepathway methods used. summary,bythewhich scientific to narrow sig A causal is theIn process an process outcome single variable and cannot separate the effect of a variable cannot be determined by the methods used. In summary, the scientific process to narrow si for inclusion seems to have been omitted. is brought into omitted. being. There is an exposure, and there is whose presence affects the other variables being for studied. inclusion seems to have been an outcome. In the case of faith, a person is “exposed” The consequence is a test result that may notAreflect the pathway faulty causal A faulty causal to pathway word and/or sacrament, and the Holy Spirit A causal pathway is [God’s] the process by which an outcome is brought into being. There is an exp actual relationship between the variable under invesA causal pathway is the process by which an outcome is brought into being.faith There is an ex promises to work through these means to produce an outcome.

In the case of faith, a person is “exposed” to [God’s] word and/or sacrament, a tigation and the outcome; this is called confounding.

A an outcome. In the case of faith, a person is “exposed” to [God’s] word and/or sacrament, a promises to work through these means to produce faith (outcome). (outcome).

Pearson’s R cannot control for confounding and the effect promises to work through these means to produce faith (outcome). of the relationship between LCMS decline and a decrease in birthrate might be explained away by controlling for the marriage rate or even by variables not included in the A picture of that relationship looks like relationship this: A picture of that looks like this: 11 analysis (e.g., an increase in education in women or an A picture of that relationship looks like this: increase in women in the workplace,12 both variables that are independently correlated with a decrease in birthrates in general). Acting to implement pronatal policies when a 11 Ibid., 17.

11 Faith is difficult to quantify, and a proxy measure Ibid., 17.

Ibid.,16. causal relationship has not been established is12premature.

12 13 Ibid.,16.

Ryan MacPherson, “Generational DownHawley Our faithuses to Our“LCMS Children and Our C is often used; itGenerosity: could beHanding said that 13 RyanofMacPherson, “Generational Generosity: Journal Lutheran Mission, 3, no. 3 (2017): 107. Handing Down Our faith to Our Children and Our Inadequate set of variables included in the 14 adherents” proxy107. faith.toAthis visual representation Journal of Lutheran Mission, 3, as no.the 3 (2017): I disagree with the term “natural itfor pertains population andbeexplain whyHawley in the 14 Faith is difficult to andincrease” a proxy as measure is often used; it could said that I disagree thequantify, term “natural increase” as it pertains to this population and explain why in the analysis Faulty Causalwith Pathway;” therefore, I include “natural increase” in with immigration. of the causal model Hawley puts forward is: adherents” as the proxy therefore, for faith. A visual“natural representation model Hawley puts f Faulty Causal Pathway;” I include increase”ofinthe withcausal immigration.

There is an inadequate set of variables included in the analysis presented but conclusions about overall effect are assumed.13 Variables to include in a population growth study would fit under two broad headings: migration —be said that While it can beissaid thatfor family faithofisthe a proxy for the While it can family faith a proxy the work Holy Spirit in the way th is a — proxy for faith, the of text does notSpirit agree in with Hawley compared membership in an those who leave the LCMS — and immigration those work the Holy theeither. way that LCMS adherent is a citizenship in a country; he says, “LCMS affiliation remains largely a characteristic that one who join the LCMS, including those who are baptized as proxy for faith, the text does not agree with either. Hawley Faith does not come from birth, even birth into a family of believers. The term Hawley uses 14 infants. A study objectively seeking to discern the “major compared membership in an LCMS church to citizenship parents are LCMS members and then become LCMS adherents is “natural growth.” This as cause” of growth or decline would include variables in a country; he says, “LCMS affiliation remainshis largely a sacrame Faith infrom an individual comes through the Holy Spirit working through word and both migration and immigration. Variables toinfaith. the 16first characteristic that one inherits at birth.”15 Faith does not two articles in the journal are restricted to “immigra- come from birth, even birth into a family of believers. The In” aThe family whereterm faith Hawley is present,uses an individual will whose be exposed to word sacrament mor tion” and most specifically to “natural increase. third for children parents areand LCMS are not in a family of faith; they will see discipleship modeled, they will be discipled, they w members and then become LCMS adherents is “natural heard the message of Jesus from a trusted person. In these ways, their exposure to their fam 11 Ibid., 17. growth. ” This will assumption is inInerror.

Faith in an changes the likelihood a person develop faith. epidemiology, we individwould refer to this 12 Ibid., 16. ualfactor comes through thecharacteristic, Holy Spirit working through his “risk factor.” A risk is any attribute, or exposure of an individual that c 13 Ryan MacPherson, “Generational Generosity: Handing Down Our 16 outcome alone; famil likelihood of developing an outcome.

The risk factor cannotto cause the word and sacrament to bring a person faith. faith to Our Children and Our Children’s Children,” Journal of Lutheran

individual faith, but it can increase or decrease the probability of it occurring. This specific effect is called a moderating variable. The outcomes are different for those who are raised i I disagree with the term “natural increase” as it pertains to this Hawley, “Demographic Change, 48. those who are15 not.

However, family and faithSocial is not in the” causal pathway of faith formation population and explain why in the section called “A Faultyand Causal Mission, 3, no. 3 (2017): 107.

14

Pathway;” therefore, I include “natural increase” in with immigration.

vi

16

Third article of the Apostle’s Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

is difficult to quantify, and a proxy measure is often used; it could be said that Hawley uses “LCMS ents” as the proxy faith. where A visualfaith representation the individual causal modelwill Hawley puts forward is: or the family of God. In the entire text In afor family is present,of an grace, forgiveness,

be exposed to word and sacrament more often than if of the journal, the name of Jesus is mentioned once, while they are not in a family of faith; they will see disciple- “LCMS” is mentioned close to 900 times, “adherents” is ship modeled, they will be discipled, they will likely have used over 200 times, and “birthrate” and “births” over e it can be said that family faith is a proxy for the work of the Holy Spirit in the way that LCMS adherent heard Jesus from a trusted In membership these 200intimes together. roxy for faith, thethe textmessage does not of agree with either.

Hawleyperson. compared an LCMS church The to causal model Hawley operates 15 ways, their exposure to affiliation their family of origin, the from “ensures the church will have a new generation nship in a country; he says, “LCMS remains largelychanges a characteristic that one inheritsthat at birth.”

22 does not come from birth, even birth a family of believers.

The term Hawley uses for children whosepreserve a cultural remnant, but likelihood a person willinto develop faith.

In epidemiology, of adherents. ” It may ts are LCMS and then become adherents “natural growth.” assumption is in error.a focus on the kingdom of God wemembers would refer to this typeLCMS of variable as ais “risk factor. ” itThis does not demonstrate in an individual comes through the Holy Spirit working through his word and sacrament to bring a person A risk factor is any attribute, characteristic, or exposure or the purpose our Lord and Savior has for his people as th.16 of an individual that changes the likelihood of develop- recorded in Scripture. ingfaith an outcome.

Theindividual risk factor causetothe outcome amily where is present, an willcannot be exposed word and sacrament more often than if they ot in a family of faith; they will see discipleship modeled, they will discipled, they will likely have alone; family faith cannot cause individual faith, be but it the message of Jesus from a trusted person.

In these ways, their exposure to their family of origin, can increase or decrease the probability of it occurring. ges the likelihood a person will develop faith. In epidemiology, we would refer to this type of variable as a This specific type of confounding effect is called a modfactor.” A risk factor is any attribute, characteristic, or exposure of an individual that changes the erating variable. The outcomes are different for those hood of developing an outcome. The risk factor cannot cause the outcome alone; family faith cannot cause in or a family faith and those are not. idual faith,who but itare canraised increase decreaseofthe probability of itwho occurring.

This specific type of confounding family faith is outcomes not in theare causal pathway of faith is called aHowever, moderating variable.

The different for those who are raised in a family of faith hose who are not. However, family faith is not in the causal pathway of faith formation. formation.

mplications ofThe this implications model are profound.

Hawley’s causal pathway model misses the purpose of of thisUtilizing model are profound.

Utilizing hurch; it focuses on ancausal institution rathermodel than the body the of Christ, discipleship, Hawley’s pathway misses purpose of the or faith formation.

church; it focuses on an institution rather than the body

ead the Journal of Lutheran Mission, this sentence seemed to capture the main idea being communicated: discipleship, or faith formation. ese issues] of areChrist, important paths for a religious denomination to ensure a stable population.”17 This purpose 18 As Ilike read“Keep the Journal of Lutheran Mission, this sentence oed in statements young people involved in religion,” “It is in the church’s best interest to 19 the main idea “A being communicated: urage earlyseemed marriageto andcapture large strong families,” religious pronatalist message can only be effectively 20 mitted if religious the means of promoting compliance,” “[Theseinstitutions issues] arehave important paths for a religious denom- “Religious organizations are 21 eting with ination one another for pieces of a shrinking pie.” ”17 This purpose is to ensure a stable population.

echoed in statements like “Keep young people involved in

wley, 48. religion,”18 “It is in the church’s best interest to encourage d article of the Apostle’s Creed, Luther’s Small Catechism early marriage and large strong families,”19 “A religious .,, 10. ., 10. pronatalist message can only be effectively transmitted if ., 11. religious institutions have the means of promoting com., 21. cPherson, 90. pliance,”20 “Religious organizations are competing with

5

one another for pieces of a shrinking pie.”21 The language of this journal is LCMS adherents. The language throughout the journal is about religion, institutions, and power rather than faith formation, followers of Jesus, the body of Christ, restoration of a broken world, 17

Ibid., 10.

18

Ibid., 10.

19

Ibid., 11.

20

Ibid., 21.

21

MacPherson, 90.

22

Hawley, “Demographic and Social Change,” 10.

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Responses

Dear Editors,

I

am grateful to Rebeka Cook for bringing up a number of good points in her recent letter. The conversation about family and the future of the LCMS is important, and I hope it includes many voices. In the pages ahead, I want to clarify a couple of points, defend my conclusions, and acknowledge certain weaknesses in my analysis that should be addressed.

In the pages ahead, I will only address those critiques aimed directly at my own work. I leave it to the editors and Dr. MacPherson to respond to other points.

Mrs. Cook makes an excellent point about causality, and a great deal of caution must be exercised when attempting to draw conclusions from data such as these. It is true that correlation coefficients tell us nothing about a particular causal relationship. Although an invaluable tool in the social sciences, high and moderate correlation coefficients should just be a starting point, to be followed by more sophisticated methods that can better discern causality.

The point about ecological inference is similarly important.1 Using census data (that includes everyone, not just LCMS members) to draw inferences about behavior within the LCMS was a crude measure, which is why I was surprised to see that the correlation was as strong as it was. It would have been better to have detailed data on birthrates and family formation within each LCMS district that was limited to the LCMS itself rather than the best proxy available.

This leads to a broader point. I absolutely agree that more work should be done to better discern the causal relationships at work. In an ideal world, it would be terrific to have longitudinal data from individual congregations, including information on infant baptisms, confirmations, deaths, and adult gains and losses.

District-level data provide a useful starting point, but the small number of districts (and the concomitant limited degrees of freedom) precludes more sophisticated statistical analyses. As data collection improves, it will be helpful if the LCMS at some future date is able to conduct a large-N, multi-level analysis that will help the denomination better discern the determinants of growth and decline, using variables at both the congregation

level and at the broader community level. I hope that the LCMS will continue to examine these questions and additionally hope that experts like Mrs. Cook will provide their insights for future projects.

However, despite acknowledging the various limitations in my report, they must be viewed in context.

There is already compelling evidence from the existing social science literature demonstrating that family formation patterns are strongly related to a denomination’s health. Some of these I mentioned in my report, but there are other examples worthy of our attention.

In what I consider the most important article on this subject, Hout, Greeley, and Wilde examined General Social Survey (GSS) data over time to discern the reason why “conservative” Protestant denominations were growing at the expense of more “liberal” mainline denominations in the latter half of the 20th century.

They found that other potential explanations, such as conversion and different rates of apostasy, had little empirical support. However, the earlier average family formation and higher fertility rates of conservative Protestants accounted for a remarkable 76 percent of the trend. They ultimately concluded: “The changing shape of U.S. Protestantism reflects the interaction of differential demography and strong socialization. There are more conservatives today because their parents had larger families than did Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, and Congregationalist parents.”2 In other words, denominations with more large families grew, and those where small families were the norm declined.

Wuthnow has similarly provided compelling evidence that declining rates of family formation account for the decline in religious observance.3 This leads to another important point that I fear was not made sufficiently clear in the earlier report. Yes, the best way to make a Lutheran is to baptize infants as Lutheran, raise those children in the church, and hope they choose to become confirmed members. However, we should not forget the other reason family and faith are connected.

There is also strong evidence that forming a traditional family at an early age is one of the best ways to ensure that a person remains connected with his or her church.

2

Michael Hout, Andrew Greeley, and Melissa J. Wilde, “The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States,” The American Journal of Sociology 107 (2001): 497.

Robert Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and ThirtySomethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 55.

3

1

W. S. Robinson, “Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals,” American Sociological Review 15 (1950): 351–57.

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

In the aforementioned book, Wuthnow showed that married young Americans remain very likely to be involved in religious congregations. In fact, the likelihood that young married Americans will attend religious services has not changed since the 1970s. Unfortunately for religious denominations, unmarried Americans are both becoming less likely to attend worship services, and they are growing as a percentage of the population.

Unmarried young men are particularly unlikely to attend worship services.

A number of explanations for these findings have been offered. Thornton, Axinn, and Hill suggested several possible reasons marriage tends to strengthen religious commitments compared to other domestic arrangements, such as cohabitation.4 Cohabitating couples may — correctly or not — feel judged by their religious communities and thus be more likely to withdraw from their churches. Married couples are also much more likely to have children, and the desire to raise children in a religious environment is often a catalyst for adults to return to church. Stolzenberg, Blair-Loy, and Waite also found that having children increased rates of religious participation among adults.5 In other words, denominations should not just be concerned with having more babies because those babies represent the future of the church; forming an intact family unit helps keep current members attached to their faith and involved in their congregations.

The question of ethnocentrism must also be addressed, as I want to be very clear on this point. Using the aggregate white birthrate of each district (rather than the birthrate for all racial and ethnic groups) made sense because of the LCMS’s demographic profile; it is one of the more homogenous denominations in the United States. I think that Sherkat was correct to describe all major branches of Lutheranism as de facto ethnic denominations.6 One can argue that this is itself a problem, though I should note that it is certainly not a problem exclusive to Lutherans. In an overwhelming majority of congregations in America, at least four-fifths of all members are from a single racial

group.7 The purpose of my analysis was to show that districts where the LCMS’s core demographic group had a higher fertility rate tended to also be the districts where the LCMS exhibited slower rates of decline. But if the LCMS chooses to pursue natalist efforts in the future, it should aim to encourage family formation for all of its members, not just those with a particular racial/ethnic identity.

The information I provided about the LCMS’s demographic characteristics was not intended to promote any exclusionary tendencies within the denomination.

The LCMS of course should be a welcoming church to all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, or citizenship status.

And it is worth noting that, when it comes to outreach to people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds, a recent study suggested that LCMS is one of the better performers. Wright et al. found that LCMS congregations were actually quite good about providing information to black, Hispanic, and Asian people who showed interest in the church; on this question, the LCMS outperformed the ELCA, the UMC, the SBC, and the PCUSA.8 I do not say this to imply that the LCMS should declare that its outreach efforts are sufficient, and I am certainly not implying that they should be abandoned. I do not speak for the LCMS, nor do I know what (if anything) the denomination will choose to do with the information provided in these reports. But the fact that my work focused on natural growth via family formation, rather than other methods of growth, does not imply that the denomination should give up its other outreach efforts.

I also understand and appreciate Mrs. Cook’s point about causal pathways. When working on my report, I treated the LCMS as I would treat any other social organization (a political party, for example). I thus focused my attention on measurable variables like LCMS adherents. Questions of discipleship and the Holy Spirit were not part of my analysis because I know of no way to measure these things. That does not mean they are not important, but they are far removed from my own area of expertise.

Related to this point, I wish to note Mrs. Cook’s own argument that “using scientific, evidence-based

4

Arland Thornton, William Axinn, and Daniel Hill, “Reciprocal Effects of Religiosity, Cohabitation, and Marriage,” American Journal of Sociology 89 (1992): 628–51.

5

Ross M. Stolzenberg, Mary Blair-Loy, and Linda J. Waite, “Religious Participation in Early Adulthood: Age and Life-Cycle Effects on Church Membership,” American Sociological Review 60 (1995): 84–103.

Darren E. Sherkat, Changing Faith: The Dynamics and Consequences of Americans’ Shifting Religious Identities (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 27–28.

6

7

National Congregations Study, “American Congregations at the Beginning of the 21st Century,” 2007, accessed February 16, 2016, http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/Docs/NCSII_report_final.pdf.

8

Bradley R.E. Wright, Christopher M. Donnelly, Michael Wallace, Stacy Missari, Annie Scola Wisnesky, and Christine Zozula, “Religion, Race, and Discrimination: A Field Experiment of How American Churches Welcome Newcomers,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 54 (2015): 185–204.

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approaches is helpful in determining policy.”

Unfortunately, using such an approach also seems to preclude the use of unmeasurable variables, such as the Holy Spirit. I chose not to discuss these considerations, even in a qualitative sense, because I lack the qualifications to do so. But my report does not dictate LCMS policy, and I assume that any policies the LCMS implements in the future will be created with crucial input from religious scholars and leaders who will ensure that the Gospel remains the denomination’s primary guide and inspiration.

In summary, Mrs. Cook brought up a number of critical points. I agree that the findings in these reports should represent the start of a research agenda rather than a definitive conclusion. But the connection between family formation and the health of religious institutions is real, even if certain causal relationships remain ambiguous.

For these reasons, I encourage the LCMS to continue thinking carefully about this subject. I additionally hope that experts such as Mrs. Cook will continue to take part in these conversations and apply their talents to these and related questions.

Best regards, George Hawley, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Political Science University of Alabama

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Dear Mrs. Rebeka Cook,

T

he letter of concern that you sent to the Revs. Heath Curtis and J. Bart Day concerning the December 2016 issue of Journal of Lutheran Mission was forwarded to me so that I could respond to the points you have raised. I authored the third article in that issue, entitled “Generational Generosity.” In February 2015, I presented a half-day workshop on the same material to President Matthew Harrison and about 60 administrators representing different areas of the Synod’s work. I understand from the Rev. Curtis that Dr. George Hawley presented his research at a separate meeting, which I did not attend. I previewed his two articles shortly before publication, but otherwise our work was independent. My comments below pertain primarily to my article, “Generational Generosity.”

First, I thank you for your interest in the membership trends of the LCMS and other church bodies; we both recognize that this is an important topic. I also appreciate your concern for a Christo-centric understanding of the church and your focus upon the means of grace as the only real entry point into the church. In Appendix B (p. 109– 10), I cautioned against applying statistics pragmatically to issues that instead should be navigated by faith. I infer from your letter that you and I are in agreement as to the efficacy of the word of God, the ministerial versus magisterial use of reason, and the theology of the cross versus the theology of glory as I delineated those in Appendix B. I also want you to know that the Synod leaders who convened to discuss my findings in February 2015 strongly agree that the church should not be in the business of crunching the numbers in order to boost numerical membership; rather, they were seeking to understand the context in which the means-of-grace ministry operates, and they were willing to suffer further numerical losses if that happens to be the cost of fidelity to Christ and his word (cf. Curtis’s introduction to the December 2016 issue). While it is true, as you note, that the name “Jesus” seldom appeared in the articles authored

by Hawley and myself, I hope that you can recognize that we in no way meant to diminish the glory that is due him but rather we were seeking to address a different question: What are the factors, humanly speaking, that help to describe and perhaps explain the trajectory of LCMS membership? Naturally, we were measuring only numbers on membership rosters, for no one but God can

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discern hearts to see faith in members or non-members.

The bulk of your concerns, as I understand them, relate to the distinction between causation and correlation and the proper methods of quantitative analysis for supporting such conclusions. Here perhaps is where we may have respectfully to disagree, but I am confident that you can give me a fair hearing even if in the end you are not fully persuaded to accept my perspective.

I invite you to consider the distinction that I see between two different parts of my argument. On the one hand, I claim quite strongly that the decline of the birthrate is the principal cause of the decline of total membership over the past 60 or so years. On the other hand, I suggest more tentatively that contraception, delayed marriage, divorce, and several other factors each have played a role in causing the birthrate to fall. I see these as two different sorts of “causal” claims, requiring two different kinds of argumentation in their support.

In the first instance, it is a matter of simple demographic arithmetic that for any time interval (year, decade, etc.): the starting population + births – deaths + immigration – emigration = the ending population. Of these variables, the birthrate has changed the most (declining to about one fourth of its 1950s level), while the other variables have remained comparatively stable over the decades. Swap the 1950 birthrate (ratio of births to base population) for the 2010 birthrate and, ceteris paribus, you’d have a declining membership in 1950 and a growing membership in 2010, but swap any of the others, and it would hardly change the situation. As I acknowledge in Appendix A (p. 108– 109), the data sources are limited in both their scope and their accuracy; however, I also explain there that “long-term, major trends remain obvious despite data limitations,” noting for example that swapping the LCMS birthrate (declining steeply and becoming quite low) and ELS birthrates (declining, but not quite as steeply) would hardly make a difference in the overall pattern for either synod (p. 109).

As for the second instance, there is less certainty as to which factor or combination of factors may have caused the birthrate to decline and/or prevented the birthrate from rebounding. Here is where Pearson coefficients, multivariate analysis, longitudinal studies, and the like could be helpful. If you feel so inclined, I would encourage you to contact the LCMS Office of Rosters, Statistics and Research Services, which provided me with yearby-year data that could be compared across the Synod’s districts. I did far more number-crunching than what

was published, and I’m sure you could take things even further. Meanwhile, if you follow my footnotes, you will discover that some of the authors that I cited arrived at their conclusions on the basis of research employing the statistical techniques that you suggest (see, for example, Carlson’s study on student loan debt leading to delayed marriage and suppressed fertility).

Furthermore, it is worth remembering that the quantitative analysis appropriate to epidemiology, the discipline that you suggested as a model, may not be appropriate to other fields. As research moves from physical to biochemical to behavioral phenomena, scientific conventions typically ease the threshold as to which p values suffice for statistical significance (perhaps p < 0.0001 in physics vs. p < 0.05 in sociology or political science). Moreover, historians and lawyers follow the preponderance of evidence rule, which in some situations allows for circumstantial evidence to trump eyewitness testimony (not all eyewitnesses are reliable, and a diverse set of independent circumstantial evidence may, therefore, outweigh a direct witness). In my article, I was not so much trying to prove that smoking causes lung cancer,which would demand the epidemiological model that you recommended, but rather to show that we have good reasons to attribute the overall numerical decline of the LCMS to a declining birthrate, which in turn resulted from a variety of factors, of which I explore seven possibilities. Conversely, we do not have good reasons to attribute the overall numerical decline of the LCMS to a lack of good youth programs or an overzealous conservatism, since neither the quantitative nor the circumstantial evidence supports those claims.

Hawley’s article, which is far more quantitative than mine, provides additional insights, such as his revelation that rural churches do a better job of resisting the decline of regional populations than we colloquially suppose, and that suburban churches do not always grow and even when they do grow, they grow at a slower rate than the base population in their neighborhoods.

After contemplating the concerns you that you have raised, I continue to stand behind my conclusions (p.

107, emphasize added): “The LCMS has experienced numerical decline” (this is an historical fact beyond question), “the chief cause of numerical decline has been a declining birth rate” (none of the other arithmetic variables in the standard demographic equation has had as momentous a shift as the birthrate, nor as monumental an impact on the calculation of the resulting population), and

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“other factors, such as … liberal or conservative … rural or urban … early childhood centers … Hispanic outreach … appear to have shaped the Synod demographics much less than the steep and persistent decline in the birth rate” (for if such factors had made a major impact, it would have shown itself in a Net Outreach number sufficient to overcome the declining birthrate; we have 60-plus years of historical records demonstrating that this was not so). I also continue to urge (and I sense that you agree with me on this point) an improvement of the Synod’s statistical record collection and further research, including longitudinal case studies (p. 108).

Let me also emphasize that I share your concern that the results of these articles would too hastily lead to policy implementations. Personally, I find the greatest value of the research that Hawley and I conducted not to be in any new answers we have produced but in the way our work has challenged old assumptions and invited new questions. Above all, however, I desire that any changes in attitude or practice would result from a renewed attention to Holy Scripture. There we find, as you noted in your letter, the doctrine of the means of grace. The word is efficacious, and that’s how the Holy Spirit builds the church.

I am, however, confused as to whether you regard the word of God as efficacious in infant baptism. The faith formation model that you propose in your letter speaks of sociological cofactors and risk factors in relation to an individual acquiring the Christian faith.

Theologically, I simply cling to God’s promise that a baptized child acquires faith through that sacrament.

Church membership is a different issue altogether, since a member could be a hypocrite and a non-member could be a baptized believer. The demographic analysis I provided does not measure the number of believers (the invisible church), but rather the number of members (the visible Synod). Both Hawley and I spoke of the birthrate as contributing to “natural growth” simply because this is the standard demographic term for population increase that results from the surplus of births over deaths; neither of us was thereby denying the efficacy of “the Holy Spirit working through His Word and Sacrament to bring a person to faith,” as you claimed that we were in your letter.

Insofar as the LCMS remains faithful in its administration of the means of grace, I remain confident that the LCMS contains many believers, for God’s word is efficacious.

The Church, capital C, is to be found wherever the marks of the church (means of grace) are found. Meanwhile,

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in a synod where congregations and schools have closed their doors due to demographic collapse, and many other congregations struggle to muster a salary for their pastors, it is prudent to understand the demographic factors driving that decline, but none of this answers the question of whether the kingdom of God is growing or declining.

Daniel’s faith persisted for 70 years of Babylonian captivity, no matter the social statistics working against him.

In Scripture we also find, as I emphasized in Appendix C (p. 110), an intergenerational ministry model in Titus 2, which I feel the church has neglected to her peril. Will a Titus 2 approach result in numerical growth of the church? I don’t know, and that’s not really my job anyway, for as I emphasized in Appendix B (also on p. 110): Let us “serve the Lord regardless of future membership trends.

One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase (1 Cor 3:7).” So, in the end, I am not offering any testable hypothesis, as if to say, “Implement Policy XYZ, and then you’ll see numerical growth,” but rather my message is “Trust God, cherish His institution of marriage, welcome His gift of children, follow His apostle’s exhortation to mentor the older generation to become mentors for the younger generation, and gather everyone around the means of grace.” That’s what I meant when concluding with the recommendation that the Synod “revive the teaching of a biblical and confessional Lutheran understanding of family vocation” and “foster intergenerational models of ministry” (p. 108).

I ground this recommendation on doctrine, not data; the demographic and cultural factors identified in my article serve primarily to reveal the context in which the twenty-first-century church must pursue her first-century mission. The quantitative analysis of the demographic equation and the qualitative analysis of historical-cultural factors were appropriate to this aim and communicated suitably to the intended audience. I remain perplexed by your assertion that “assuming the birthrate is causative of decline, the correlation is still not statistically strong enough to drive life-altering policy.” The alterations in “policy” that I recommend merely consist in renewing our appreciation for the vocation of parents and bridging the congregation and its families Titus 2-style, while also reconsidering a congregation’s stewardship of their called workers’ financial needs (e.g., aiming for full-time, rather than bi-vocational, salaries). My article imposes no new burdens upon the community, for the actions I suggest are what any sanctified Christian would delight in doing,

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whether 2,000 years ago or today.

If you discover that the LCMS is misapplying my research to support any anti-biblical agenda, please alert me. I will stand with you in correcting them. For the present, I remain confident that President Harrison and the Revs. Curtis and Day are proceeding as faithful “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1).

Your brother in Christ, Ryan C. MacPherson, Ph.D. President, Into Your Hands LLC www.intoyourhandsllc.com Chair, Department of History Bethany Lutheran College

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Journal of Lutheran

Mission Table of Contents March 2017 | Vol. 4 | No. 1

New Frontiers

by Steven Schave................................................................................................................................................... 2 Mission USA: America’s Changing Demographic Landscape

by Larry Vogel...................................................................................................................................................... 4 Reaching the Latino Mission Field: USA

by Carlos Hernandez........................................................................................................................................ 17 The Presence of God

by Todd Kollbaum............................................................................................................................................... 19 Serving Jesus at Church and in Community

by Roosevelt Gray ............................................................................................................................................. 21 Theological Framework of City as Mission Field

by Jeffrey Pulse................................................................................................................................................... 23 Engaging the World in the Incubator of Ideas

by Marcus T. Zill ............................................................................................................................................... 28 Christian Vocation and the Mission of God: A Missing Link?

by Andrew Pfeiffer ........................................................................................................................................... 30 Reaching Out to the Inner City: Opportunities and Challenges for Mission Here at Home by Klaus Detlev Schultz .................................................................................................... 38 Book Review: Has American Christianity Failed? by Warren Graff................................................. 48

© 2017 The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Reproduction of a single article or column for parish use only does not require permission of The Journal of Lutheran Mission. Such reproductions, however, should credit The Journal of Lutheran Mission as the source. Cover images are not reproducible without permission. Also, photos and images credited to sources outside the LCMS are not to be copied.

Published by The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod.

Please direct queries to journaloflutheranmission@lcms.org.

This journal may also be found at www.lcms.org/journaloflutheranmission.

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Member: Associated Church Press Evangelical Press Association (ISSN 2334-1998). Indexed in ATLA Religion Database. A periodical of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Offices of National and International Mission.

New Frontiers

What do we think of when it comes to mission work?

by Steven Schave

W

hen we think of missions, we typically literally where the world is at our doorsteps, with people think of days gone by, when we sent a from around the globe living together in a city block. To missionary out into the field, in some faraway be sure, the cities of the United States are some of the place, to reach a people group who had never heard the greatest mission fields there are on the planet. And as the gospel. And to be sure, this work has borne much fruit, as city goes, so goes the culture, influencing politics, arts, we now have mission activity in nearly ninety countries. and technology. But from a Christian worldview, the cities We have planted not only churches around the world, but also bring great difficulties as they are seen as places filled have helped in establishing self-sustaining church bodies with turmoil, corruption, religious persecution, crime, unrest, poverty, and immorality. And so with their own administrations, mercy amidst these challenges, the church is operations, and seminaries. And it While church losing its foothold in the most densely would seem that the need for theological planting and populated locations in the United education of indigenous church leaders revitalization may States. But as we see with the prophet is at an all-time high in these places. seem to be only Jonah, God demands that we preach Contrast that with what has haprepentance and forgiveness in the city, pened over the years in the United concerned with if for no other reason than there are just States. As our partners in the global new mission in so many souls at stake.

South have seen growth in Christianity, new frontiers, to Our rural communities, where the United States, along with the rest of be sure, it is also a a very large portion of our existing Western civilization, has seen its decline continuation of the churches are located, have also fallen on in terms of those attending church. From hard times with many of the same chala merely anecdotal perspective, the averreformation of the lenges as our urban areas. And while age LCMS member who remembers the Christian church. rural America is typically associated 1960s and 70s can still recall that in the with being a place of traditional values neighborhoods they grew up in, it was a bit of a stigma for a family to not have a connection to and churchgoers, it too is becoming more and more seca local church. But today, serving in a metropolitan city, ularized. Suburbs have long been thought of in terms of it would not be shocking at all to meet a child who has white picket fences, gated communities, and block parties, but with the advent of the digital world, the fabric never even heard of Jesus.

With that said, the United States has been dubbed the of fellowship has been torn and walls are being mounted third largest population of the “unchurched,” behind only in a country divided. And things are changing rapidly China and India. Urbanization and “urban pioneers” are throughout the United States, with huge demographic reversing the trends of flight from the city with expec- shifts and massive immigration influxes. This is Mission tations that 80% of the population will soon live within Field: USA, with its many contexts and incredibly diverse city limits. Great efforts are being made to revitalize landscapes. Regardless of how different the environment and repopulate the city, and for the first time they are may be, however, there is one human condition and one outgrowing their suburbs in many areas. Our cities are gospel needed by all.

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The challenge of mission today in America is therefore twofold. On the one hand, the vast majority of our existing congregations are declining. On the other hand, our church body does not reflect the shifting demographics of a new America in terms of age, ethnicity, and location.

And this is where we might diverge in mission priorities.

Do we say that planting new churches among new people groups in new locations does not bear enough fruit for the investment that is needed? Do we make it our priority to “increase our base” through growing families who are strong in the faith and double down on our efforts in revitalization?

Or do we say our existing congregations are going through a natural life cycle and should have a dignified end, thereby saying that all of our investment should be made in planting new churches and reaching new people groups by raising up ethnic immigrant church workers to serve these diverse populations and helping to rebuild communities both physically and spiritually? It is indeed a false biblical dichotomy to pit revitalization against church planting, as much as it is to pit international against national mission. To be sure, there are unique contexts and challenges, but let there be no doubt, God wishes for all men to be saved.

In terms of revitalizing a congregation, “vital” is the key component of “revitalization.” Wherever the word is proclaimed in its purity and God’s sacraments are rightly administered, there is spiritual vitality. But is spiritual vitality enough for a congregation to be vital?

Congregational vitality begins with spiritual vitality, but it also includes factors that affect its ability to begin, increase, or continue activities that convey the spiritual vitality of word and sacrament ministry. The new Synod revitalization program, re:Vitality, systematically addresses congregational vitality to determine a congregation’s stage of vitality and the most effective ways to preserve, increase, or restore it through a three-part approach: Objective & Consistent Self-Assessment, Action-Oriented Training, and Equipping God’s People for Outreach-Integrated Witness. The needs and circumstances of congregations vary. re:Vitality goes from self-assessment to improving the effectiveness of congregational outreach by intentionally creating connections, building relationships, and making disciples. This is a biblical understanding of how we are involved in God’s mission to reach the lost:

2

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Cor. 3:5–9) Conventional wisdom in regard to national missions and church planting would tell us that we must start the equivalent of 2% of the number of our existing congregations (~122 a year) for us to simply maintain the number of communicant members in the LCMS. So too, conventional wisdom would dictate that to reach the most new converts requires new churches in new places. Likewise, it is true that planting new churches is part of the very fabric of the LCMS, as is mission to new people groups.

But this will take a shift in priority to see the United States as a ripe mission field in need of investment. As a nation, we are divided, our inner cities continue to struggle, and the masses have a negative view of organized religion.

And yet we must remain bold confessors, weeping prophets, gospel-bearing marauders who stand before the gates of hell even as we might be outcasts.

In the days of the Israelite exiles who found themselves as resident aliens, God did not call them to withdraw from the world. While not compromising their values and beliefs, they were also called to be the best citizens they could be: serving the poor, being charitable to their neighbors, reaping hot coals on the heads of their enemies through their good works, and being known for how they loved one another. And in the age of the Diaspora, in the midst of persecution, the early church planted congregations in large urban areas and strengthened the existing congregations in times of adversity and division. This was and is and ever shall be God’s mission, never more so than in these dark and latter days.

While church planting and revitalization may seem to be only concerned with new mission in new frontiers, to be sure, it is also a continuation of the reformation of the Christian church. In this 500th year of the Reformation, we see that here in the United States there is indeed much confusion and a shadow that covers over the gospel as in the past. The very same confession of faith that was brought into the light all those centuries ago is

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now needed as much as ever in these modern times. And wherever this seed of the Lutheran witness is planted, it is reformational by its very nature. Faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone, Christ alone—that is most desperately needed by those broken by sin in the United States. And by the word of God, the LCMS in the United States will find renewal again in the difficult days ahead.

This is a watershed moment in a new frontier: to reach into the heart of the city, to have a pivotal role in racial reconciliation in America, to welcome those coming into our nation, while reaching back into an era of witnessing amidst the skeptical and even persecutors. As we turn the chapter, it will be all hands on deck to support our missions and our missionaries who will be pioneers of global mission work right here in our own backyard. This is not institutional preservation; it is being faithful to our call to reach the least and the lost!

The Rev. Steven Schave is director of LCMS Urban & InnerCity Mission and director of LCMS Church Planting for the Office of National Mission.

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The numbers don’t lie: The LCMS

Mission USA: America’s Changing Demographic Landscape1

isn’t growing because she isn’t countercultural.

by Larry Vogel

Introduction: Definitions and Scope

D

emographics is the study of a population in order (1) to describe it accurately, (2) to identify patterns and developments, and (3) to predict new social realities. It is the study of groups of people — populations that may be designated in various ways, from worldwide or national populations, to “sub-populations” or identifiable groups within groups.

Certain basic demographic factors are central to demographic analysis: age and sex distribution, birth rate, major sub-groups, and migration patterns.2 This article will briefly describe such core factors, especially regarding the US population, then compare them to the demographics of the LCMS, and close with a few suggestions for LCMS mission priorities.

1. Core Demographic Change — The Demographic Transition In 1968, Paul Ehrlich warned that human population growth was leading to imminent catastrophe, that within the decade of the 1970s hundreds of millions would starve (including a third of the US population).3 Ehrlich’s predictions were widely circulated and believed and, charitably, woefully inaccurate. Nevertheless, many still worry about surging human population and may be surprised to hear that, “All told, some fifty-nine countries, comprising roughly 44% of the world’s total population, are currently not producing enough children to avoid population

decline, and the phenomenon continues to spread.”4 The term “demographic transition” (DT) describes this phenomenon. It is one of the most helpful observations from the study of demographics. The DT unfolds over time in stages. A visual may help.5 Pre-transition (stage 1), a society must have lots of children because lives are short for most and many die in infancy.

Mortality and birth rates are both high. Note how the DT changes this: •D eclining mortality: The population experiences an increasing average life span as a result of declining infant mortality and greater longevity as nutrition, sanitation, and medicine all improve (note the steeply declining death rate in stages two and three).

•P opulation growth: As a direct result, the population increases as it experiences natural, biological growth (note the increasing trajectory of total population in stages two and three).

•D eclining fertility: As the transition continues, the population experiences declining birth rates because women have fewer babies on average (see the declining birth rate in stage three especially).

•P opulation aging: The fourth stage of the transition is marked by a decrease in the natural population growth rate and the average age of the population rises.6 Phillip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 26.

4

1

This paper is based, in part, on a presentation given at the LCMS Mission Summit on November 20, 2014.

5

Donald T. Rowland, Demographic Methods and Concepts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 2008), 30.

6

2 3

4

Paul R. Ehrlich, Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968).

Visuals that were not created by the author contain the source either within the visual or as a footnote.

Tim Dyson argues that another fundamental change involved in the DT is the urbanization of the population in question; Population and Development: The Demographic Transition (London, New York: Zed Books, 2010).

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These four stages are complete in the “developed strong economic correlation with this transition. Aging world.”7 Moreover, virtually every human population nations tend toward prosperity while youthful nations is at some stage of the DT as infant mortality declines and earlier in the DT are poor.11 longevity increases even in the poorest nations. Of course, 2. D emographic Patterns and Details that means some populations are growing rapidly, since For affluent populations, the transithey are in the early stages of the DT. tion to aging has already occurred.

However, the long-term effect of the Three specific demographic details DT is population decline, not popuare important: age and sex, birth rate, lation growth. and migration.

A second graph8 shows the same phenomenon, but has a stage five, a. Age-Sex Distribution Over Time labeled with a question mark. It Note the series of age-sex pyramids12 shows what has happened wherever for the United States based on census the previous four stages are completed. In this stage the data for 1960 (top), 1985 (middle), and 2014 (bottom). birth rate stays below replacement levels and eventually At the end of the baby boom in 1960, 38% of the United total population declines. Despite many questions about States was under twenty and 13% over sixty. By 1985, less it, this stage of the transition is occurring throughout the than 30% of the population was under twenty, a drop of developed world.9 almost 25%. The boomers ballooned the 20–40 cohort The DT develops slowly, often unnoticed. Rates of and 16% of America was over sixty, with a few over declining mortality and childbirth are not uniform. Nevertheless, the is a significant move back to a more ‘We’ll have almost as DT is one of the most helpful framesustainable population. See Britta Sandstroem many Americans over “Russia’s Baby Boom: Fertility Rate Far Higher works for understanding population than in EU, Rising Quickly,” Russia-Insider.

10 conditions globally. There is also age 85 as under age 5. com, accessed September 13, 2016, http:// 7

Developed world refers to economically developed areas, most notably Europe, North America, Latin America, Russia, East Asia, Australia, and most of Southeast Asia.

8

See “Demographic Transition Model,” Geography Department of Lord Wandsworth College, accessed September 13, 2016, http:// geographylwc.org.uk/A/AS/ASpopulation/ DTM.htm.

This is the result of longer life spans and lower birthrates. It’s uncharted territory, not just for us, but for all of humanity.’

9

For a couple of decades there was a theory among demographers that populations would naturally maintain replacement levels of population as the transition was completed.

Recent facts don’t corroborate that theory. Rather, in a number of countries, including almost all of the former Soviet-bloc countries, Cuba, Japan, Germany, and much of the EU, the DT is at a stage in which all have very low, sub-replacement total fertility rates (TFRs).

So stage 5 can happen, but whether it is a “natural” result of the basic model itself remains a topic of debate. A helpful website showing declining TFR is “Fertility rate, total (births per woman),” The World Bank, accessed September 13, 2016, http://data.worldbank.org/ indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN. 10

One can easily, for example, divide world regions into two categories: those who have completed the transition to low mortality and low birth rates and those who are at various stages within the process.

Russia is an outlier. It experienced a decline in infant mortality to sub-replacement levels, but longevity is not increasing because of high levels of substance abuse, smoking, chronic illnesses, AIDS, suicide, and other problems. See Murray Feshbach, “Population and Health Constraints on the Russian Military,” Susan Yoshihara and Douglas A. Silva, eds., Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics (Washington: Potomac Books, 2012), Kindle location 1445–1710. It is noteworthy, however, that a recent trend in Russia toward more births

russia-insider.com/en/politics/russias-babyboom-fertility-rate-far-higher-eu-risingquickly/ri385.

11

On the one side, Europe has gone through the four stages and is now struggling to maintain its native populations. On the other, Africa has experienced certain elements of the DT without others — overall mortality is declining slowly (due to less infant mortality), but, while birth rates have declined about 20% in recent decades, they continue among the highest worldwide (Clint Laurent, Tomorrow’s World: A Look at the Demographic and Socio-economic Structure of the World in 2032 [Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2013], 19). Dyson notes that the correlation between economics and DT is not iron-clad: “There is no reason to believe that a major rise in per capital income is required for the constituent processes of the transition to unfold,” (Dyson, Population and Development, 5). See also Longman, Empty Cradle, 30. Longevity in Africa is also facing headwinds like AIDS, malaria, and significant deaths from violence and warfare. See also Longman, Empty Cradle, 8–11. Longman theorizes that declining TFRs in the Mid-East have fueled fundamentalism because it is a byproduct of greater freedom for Muslim women, which is viewed as a Western evil imported to Islam. World TFR maps are available from many sources. See “Total Fertility Rate of the World,” Maps of World, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.mapsofworld.com/thematicmaps/world-total-fertility-rate-map.html#. See also Ronald Lee, “The Demographic Transition: Three Centuries of Fundamental Change,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 167. He calculates that aging will be ten times more important than births.

12

Based on visualizations and data by Martin De Wulf, “Population Pyramids of the World from 1950-2050,” populationpyramid.net, accessed September 13, 2016, http://populationpyramid.net and http:// populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2016/.

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5

eighty-five. In 2014 the distribution is generally uniform in age-sex from infancy to about sixty years. About a fourth is 0–19 years, another quarter is 20–39, a third quarter is 40–59, and a final fourth of the population is now aged sixty and up — a 150% increase for that increasingly female group. Notice the significant number of people over age 85, especially compared to 1985. Less than a tenth of 1% of the population was over 85 years of age in 1985. Today almost 2% of the population is — a twenty-fold increase.

Paul Taylor from the Pew Research Council explains:

DT predominate in Africa, parts of the Middle East, India, and Muslim Asia. As for the United States, we are in the two to three children per woman category. But that is deceptive since US TFRs have been hovering only slightly above and often below 2.0 for some time. In 2012, the last year for which we have firm statistics on births in the United States from the CDC, the general fertility rate hit a 25-year low.

(Note: The 2012 total fertility rate (TFR) for the United States was 1,880.5 births per 1,000 women, 1% below the 2011 rate (1,894.5) (Tables 4, 8, 13, and 14). After generally increasing from 1998 through We’ll have almost as many Amer2007, the TFR has declined for each icans over age 85 as under age of the last 5 years. The TFR esti5. This is the result of longer life mates the number of births that a spans and lower birthrates. It’s hypothetical group of 1,000 women uncharted territory, not just for would have over their lifetimes, us, but for all of humanity. And based on age-specific birth rates in a given year. Because while it’s certainly good news over the long haul it is computed from age-specific birth rates, the TFR is for the sustainability of the earth’s resources, it will age-adjusted, and can be compared for populations across create political and economic stress in the shorter time, population groups, and geographic areas. The TFRs term, as smaller cohorts of working age adults will declined for nearly all race and Hispanic origin groups in be hard-pressed to finance the retirements of larger 2012, down 1–2% for non-Hispanic 13 cohorts of older ones. white, non-Hispanic black, Hispanic The flight from b. Birth Rate and AIAN women. The rate for API One of the most significant marriage creates diverse women rose 4% from 2011 to 2012, demographic measures is “total ferhowever. The 2012 US TFR remained social problems. tility rate” or TFR. TFR is the average below “replacement” — the level at number of children women will bear. which a given generation can exactly A replacement TFR for a population requires more than replace itself (generally considered to be 2,100 births per 2,100 births each year per thousand women in a society.14 1,000 women). The TFR has been generally below replaceLow birthrates and a completed DT in Europe, afflu- ment since 1971. With the exception of Hispanic women ent Asia, and elsewhere have resulted in TFRs below (reflecting mainly rates for Mexican and other Hispanic the level needed to replace populations. High birthrates women), the TFRs for all other groups were below because populations are in a (much) earlier stage of the replacement (Tables 8 and 14). Read more from Joyce A. Martin, et al., “Births: Final Data for 2012,” National 13 Paul Taylor, “The Next America,” Pew Research Center, April 10, Vital Statistics Reports (vol. 62, no. 9), Center for Disease 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/#Two-Dramas-inControl, US Department of Health and Human Services, 2, Slow-Motion. abbreviated as CDC 2012, accessed September 13, 2016, 14 In individual terms, that means that the average individual woman must have two or more children for a population to remain constant. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_09.pdf.)

For fertility in individual countries see “Fertility rate, total (births The most recent CDC report on births says, “Since per woman),” The World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ 1971, our TFR has exceeded 2.1 only two times (1971, SP.DYN.TFRT.IN.

6

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

White Population: 2000 – 2010 Race and Hispanic or Latino Origin

2010 Number in millions

2000 Percent of total pop.

2010 Number in millions

Total Population

281.4

White alone or in combination

216.9

77.1

231.0

White alone

211.5

75.1

223.6

16.9

6.0

Hispanic/Latino Not Hispanic/Latino

100

2010 Percent of total pop.

308.7

Change 2000-2010 in millions.

100

Change 20002010 by percent

27.3

9.7

74.8

14.1

6.5

72.4

12.1

5.7

26.7

8.7

9.8

58.1

194.6

69.1

196.8

63.7

2.3

1.2

White in combination

5.5

1.9

7.5

2.4

2.0

36.9

White: Black/African American

0.8

0.3

1.8

0.6

1.0

133.7

White: Some Other Race

2.2

0.8

1.7

0.6

(0.5)

(21.1)

White: Asian

0.9

0.3

1.6

0.5

0.8

86.9

White: Am. Indian (Eskimo)

1.1

0.4

1.4

0.5

0.3

32.3

White: Black, Am. Indian

0.1

-

0.2

0.1

0.1

105.7

All other combinations Not White alone or in comb.

0.4

0.1

0.6

0.2

0.2

50.4

64.5

22.9

77.7

25.2

13.2

20.5

– Percentage rounds to 0.0 Note: In Census 2000, an error in data processing resulted in an overstatement of the Two or More Races population by about 1 million people (about 15 percent) nationally, which almost entirely affected race combinations involving Some Other Race. Therefore, data users should assess observed changes in the Two or More Races population and race combinations involving Some Other Race between Census 2000 and the 2010 Census with caution. Changes in specific race combinations not involving Some Other Race, such as White and Black or African American or White Not White alone or in comb. Asian, generally should be more comparable.

Sources: U S Census Bureau, Census 2000 Redistricting Data (Public Law 94-171) Summary File, Tables PL1 and PL2; and 2010 Census Redistricting Data (Public Law 94–171) Summary File, Tables P1 and P2.

2007). It was 1.9 in 2012. With the exception of Hispanic women, all ethnic or racial groups in the United States have below replacement fertility.”15 The preceding table from the 2010 US Census compares the 2000 and 2010 census results, especially with respect to the growth of the white population over against other races and people of Hispanic or Latino origin.16 It indicates an overall growth in the US population of just under 10% for the decade. However, while the United States did more than replace its population in the decade, growth is not coming because of overall births, but largely because of increasing longevity and the growth of the Hispanic population. Non-Latino whites increased their population by only 1.2% for the decade (due to modest immigration from Europe). Non-Hispanic white deaths

exceeded births beginning in 2012.17 Compare the 1.2% white population growth to Hispanic population growth of 58.1%. Latino growth is based first on immigration, second birthrate, and third on increasing longevity.

Moreover, 37.1% of Latino Americans are under twenty, compared to 22.4% for whites.18 In comparison to non-Latino whites, Hispanics will have a much larger proportion of their population of child-bearing age for the foreseeable future.19 c. Migration 17

See Sam Roberts, “Census Benchmark for White Americans: More Deaths Than Births,” New York Times (June 13, 2013), accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/us/censusbenchmark-for-white-americans-more-deaths-than-births.html?_r=0. I can find no reliable data comparison of births to deaths for 2013.

18

15

Data published on December 30, 2013. For as long as the CDC has tracked TFR for Hispanic women, they have exceeded the overall US TFR, but in 2012 the Hispanic TFR had diminished to 2.2, only slightly above replacement level (CDC 2012, 7). The CIA, which uses slightly different measures than the CDC, estimated the TFR for the United States at 2.0 for 2014. See “The World Factbook,” Central Intelligence Agency, https://www.cia.gov; from “Country Comparison: Total Fertility Rate,” Central Intelligence Agency, accessed September 13, 2016, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ rankorder/2127rank.html.

16

Because the census identifies both by race and ethnicity, there is some overlap — as when an individual is identified as both white and Hispanic — which the chart takes into account. Lindsay Hixson, Bradford B. Hepler, Myoung Ouk Kim, “The White Population: 2010,” 2010 Census Briefs (September 2011): 3, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-05.pdf.

Based on 2012 numbers — latest available — “The Hispanic Population in the US: 2012,” United States Census Bureau, Hispanic Origin, accessed September 13, 2016, https://www.census.gov/ population/hispanic/data/2012.html.

19

Even if the Latino birth rate drops to that of whites, the Latino population will grow about twice as fast as non-Hispanic whites. From 2000-2009, nine US Latinos were born for every Latino who died, while white births barely exceeded deaths (Rogelio Saenz, “Population Bulletin Update: Latinos in the United States 2010,” Population Reference Bureau, December 2010, 1–2, http://www.prb.org/pdf10/ latinos-update2010.pdf). The link is no longer active — last access on November 10, 2014. As of July 2015, non-Hispanic white births were exceeded by total minority births. See D’Vera Cohn, “It’s official: Minority babies are the majority among the nation’s infants, but only just,” Pew Research Center, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/23/its-official-minority-babies-arethe-majority-among-the-nations-infants-but-only-just/.

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The final core demographic component is migration, the suburbs and rural America (although there are notewhich includes two elements: international immigra- worthy exceptions). tion and internal migration.20 Historically, a significant Americans have always been mobile, seeking opporrate of immigration is not exceptional for the United tunity by moving to a different US location. Such internal States. The sources of immigration, however, shift over migration continues.23 Almost 3% of the US population time — Germans at one point, Irish at another, Italian, moves to a different state each year and about a third yet another. The result is always dynamic change in the of the US population has moved from the state where US population. Today, immigration, in addition to TFR, they were born.24 With few exceptions, the Midwest and is shifting the complexion of the country. The Census Northeast struggle to retain population while the South Bureau predicts that the white population will peak in ten and West continue to draw. years and then begin to fall in totality The most important aspect of and as a percentage. The black popuinternal migration is urbanization. lation will grow slightly; Asians and To be sure some urban centers (like With a declining 21 Hispanics will grow dramatically. importance of extended Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, or St. Current percentages of immiLouis) are static or are in population family and community, grants to the United States are decline, (although with increasing fewer traditions, similar to those from the 1850s to percentages of immigrants and other values, and religious the 1920s, but source countries for minority populations). Broader US immigrants have changed markurban areas — cities plus suburbs/ perspectives are edly. Today’s immigrants are largely exurbs — continue to grow, howinherited.

Latino, Asian, and African, rather ever. Small to mid-sized cities are 22 than European. Overall, immigrant also growing.25 Rural and small town growth is most evident in cities in the coastal United America’s population loss26 is typically offset only in areas States and along the southern border and is less evident in where immigrants have located.27 Although many immigrants settle near entry points — thus the heavy Latino populations along the southern border and Asian pop20 Emigration from the United States is too low to be considered. ulations on the West Coast — not all remain in these Immigrant and foreign-born are synonymous terms; the immigrant population includes all the foreign-born in the United States as nearly states. The next visual shows that the number of states in as they can be counted, including documented and undocumented which Hispanic kids comprise more than 20% of kinderimmigrants, as well as those immigrants who are now naturalized citizens. gartners has doubled in twelve years. These now include 21 “The non-Hispanic white population is projected to peak in 2024 states in the aging Northeast, the Great Plains, and the at 199.6 million, up from 197.8 million in 2012. Unlike other race or ethnic groups, however, its population is projected to slowly decrease, falling by nearly 20.6 million from 2024 to 2060. Meanwhile, the Hispanic population would more than double, from 53.3 million in 2012 to 128.8 million in 2060. Consequently, by the end of the period, nearly one in three US residents would be Hispanic, up from about one in six today. The black population is expected to increase from 41.2 million to 61.8 million over the same period. Its share of the total population would rise slightly, from 13.1% in 2012 to 14.7 % in 2060.

The Asian population is projected to more than double, from 15.9 million in 2012 to 34.4 million in 2060, with its share of nation’s total population climbing from 5.1% to 8.2% in the same period” (“U.S. Census Bureau Projections Show a Slower Growing, Older, More Diverse Nation Half a Century from Now,” December 12, 2012, United States Census Bureau, accessed September 13, 2016, https://www.census. gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-243.html).

22

Pew reports that the Latino percentage of immigrants has been declining while Asian immigration has increased. The drop in Hispanic immigration as a percentage of immigrants coincides with recent economic decline and increasing focus on border security (Renee Stepler and Mark Hugo Lopez, “U.S. Latino Population Growth and Dispersion Has Slowed Since Onset of the Great Recession,” Pew Research Center, September 8, 2016, accessed September 13, 2016, at http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/09/08/latino-population-growthand-dispersion-has-slowed-since-the-onset-of-the-great-recession/).

8

23

Internal migration hit a 30-year low since the recession of 2008 (Raven Molloy, Christopher L. Smith, and Abigail Wozniak, “Internal Migration in the United States,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, no. 3 [2011]: 173-96, accessed September 13, 2016, https://www.aeaweb. org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.3.173).

24

Ibid., 178.

Kenneth Johnson, Demographic Trends in Rural and Small Town America (University of New Hampshire: Carsey Institute, 2006), accessed September 13, 2016, http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1004&context=carsey. See also Hope Yen, “Rural America Is Steadily Shrinking, Census Data Says,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 28, 2011).

25

Johnson, Demographic Trends, adds: “The share of people in rural areas over the past decade fell to 16%, passing the previous low of 20% in 2000. The rural share is expected to drop further as the US population balloons from 309 million to 400 million by mid-century, leading people to crowd cities and suburbs and fill in the open spaces around them.”

26

27

Mark Mather and Kevin Pollard, “Hispanic Gains Minimize Population Losses in Rural America,” Population Reference Bureau, August 2007, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.prb.org/ Publications/Articles/2007/HispanicGains.aspx.

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Northwest.28 Despite the many concerns about immigration that are part of the current national debate, from the standpoint of demographics, immigration is a significant plus, providing not only a population of workers, but also hope for programs like Social Security that depend on young people to fund benefits for older ones. Paul Taylor reminds us that immigration is “akin to raising the birthrate, but its impact is more immediate, because the newcomers arrive ready to work.”29

3. Current and Future Realities: Sociocultural Consequences of Demographic Change Demographic Transition affects culture both directly and indirectly. Direct effects include those obvious, measurable realities mentioned above. But other resultant changes in culture, that is, customs and assumptions, also flow from the DT. First, attitudes about children change. As the population increases earlier in the DT there are more dependent children. While children can be an economic benefit in an agrarian culture, bigger families become liabilities, not assets, in urban environments. Children are increasingly viewed as burdens rather than blessings and adults seek ways to limit family size (contraception). Smaller families become the ideal — a profound reassessment of the family itself.

Since declining mortality precedes birth rate declines, the DT first produces an increasingly youthful population with high childhood dependency. Africa illustrates this today internationally. Poverty is a frequent corollary to high economic dependency. And, with poverty, violence is another indirect effect of early stage population increase because of a high percentage of young men. A high percentage of poor young men without many economic opportunities is a prescription for violence.30 28

Jens Manuel Krogstad, “A View of the Future Through Kindergarten Demographics,” Pew Research Center FactTank, July 8, 2014, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/08/ a-view-of-the-future-through-kindergarten-demographics/.

29

Taylor, “Next America,” 86.

George Magnus, The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World, (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 205–209.

30

Second, the DT produces radical change in the lives of women. The significance of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing is greatly diminished as birth rates plummet.

The typical woman experiences a smaller percentage of her life in motherhood.

Women are increasingly intent on education, employment, and careers rather than childbearing. Many will postpone both marriage and children, some will marry but choose not to bear children, and others will neither marry nor bear children. The nexus between women and marriage is severed when women no longer find primary identity as mothers. Distinctive roles for men and women are largely blurred.

As women’s lives change, so do households. The accompanying table31 shows concrete examples for the United States: in 1940, 90% of American households consisted of a family: husband-wife, with or without kids, or mother or father alone with kids. Today over one-third of American households are non-family households of single individuals or unrelated persons living together.32 Clearly, marriage is in decline when only 48% of households are married. Even more significantly, families of any

sort are also in decline, with over one-third of households being non-familial.

31

Based on data from “Families and Living Arrangements,” Table HH-1 “Households by Type, 1940 to Present,” US Census Bureau, downloaded October 27, 2014, https://www.census.gov/hhes/families/ data/households.html.

Table of “Selected Social Characteristics in the United States,” US Census Bureau American Fact Finder, accessed on September 13, 2016, http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview. xhtml?pid=ACS_13_3YR_DP02&prodType=table. Abbreviated as CenFact.

32

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9

Nicholas Eberstadt warns of a “flight from marriage” (a “global tidal wave away from early stable lifelong conjugal unions”).33 The flight from marriage creates diverse social problems, further indirect effects of the DT. To mention just one, consider the societal costs of children in a single parent household. Demographer Sara McLanahan argues that as the DT moves to sub-replacement birthrates, it widens “social class disparities.”

must determine their own identity, attitudes, and values.35 Fourth, the DT makes long life a social problem. Early in the DT, large numbers of children mean increasing dependency strains for their parents. At the end of the transition, instead of large numbers of dependent children, aging societies are supporting an increasing number of older people with limited ability to provide all their needs.36 The aged are increasingly viewed as liabilities and burdens, rather than blessings.

Children who were born to mothers from the Other effects of the DT are more subtle. Demographer most-advantaged backgrounds are making subTim Dyson argues that the social effects of demographic stantial gains in resources. Relative to their counchange are centered in a new attitude about life based on terparts 40 years ago, their mothers are more maincreasing longevity: “A key point here is that mortality ture and more likely to be working at well-paying decline generates higher levels of confidence in society as jobs. These children were born into stable unions regards the worldly future.”37 As life expectancy extends and are spending more time with and fewer die “young,” people gain their fathers. In contrast, chila greater sense of confidence about dren born to mothers from the the here and now. Attitudes change Pew’s LCMS data, for most disadvantaged backgrounds about everything from how many are making smaller gains and, in example, shows that on children they should have, to sexual some instances, even losing paissues such as abortion, and marriage habits, to gender roles, rental resources. Their mothers homosexuality, and and so forth. More important for our are working at low-paying jobs. purposes is a theological implication: same-sex marriage, Their parents’ relationships are Less attention is given to thoughts individual members of unstable, and for many, support from their biological fathers is LCMS churches tend to about what comes after death. In biblical language, demographic change minimal.34 reflect the attitudes of results in people taking far more the rest of the country.

Third, extended family and com“thought for the morrow” (Matt munities have less influence over 6:34, KJV), for the coming days and attitudes and values. Migration years rather than for a life that is and, in particular, urbanization results in a declining everlasting. importance for the extended family as many individuals, couples, and nuclear families relocate. This changes 35 Families also become more child-centered (social supply and lifestyle and not merely location. With a declining demand). Having fewer children means greater emotional investment in children since rarity makes for value. Consider what can be called importance of extended family and community, fewer the “4-2-1 effect” in China where every four parents now have only two traditions, values, and religious perspectives are inher- children and every two children produce only one grandchild, or, on a mundane level, the constant whirl of social, school, and sporting ited. Migration demands more of the individual and the more events focused on American kids. In its extreme, children are feted nuclear family — the individual and the nuclear family and catered to and parents become hyper-vigilant, fearing the injury 33

Nicholas Eberstadt writes: “Perhaps more important than any of the other portents for future childbearing is what has been termed by demographic specialists ‘the flight from marriage’: the modern global tidal wave away from early stable lifelong conjugal unions” (Yoshihara, Population Decline, Kindle edition, Locations 131-133).

34

Sara McLanahan, “Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under the Second Demographic Transition,” Demography 41, no.

4 (November 2004): 608. See also E. Bradford Wilcox, ed., When Marriage Disappears: The New Middle America, The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America (Charlottesville, Virginia: The National Marriage Project, December 2010 [NMP]), accessed September 13, 2016, http:// www.stateofourunions.org/2010/index.php.

10

or loss of the only child. Children experience increasing influence over against parents and others. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets recently noted the phenomenon of children calling parents by their first name. In Britain some child advocates recommend such things as having children participate in the interview process for hiring new teachers. See “Children Put ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ on a First Name Basis: For Attention, Power, or a Test,” The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2013, accessed September 13, 2016, http://online.wsj.com/articles/ children-put-mom-and-dad-on-a-first-name-basis-1414609230 and “Pupils ‘interviewing teachers for jobs,’” BBC News, April 3, 2010, accessed September 13, 2016, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/ education/8599485.stm.

36

Longman, Empty Cradle, 52-57.

37

Dyson, Population and Development, 159, emphasis added.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Another indirect effect as population makeup changes exception of Russia,42 none of these contemporary, govas a result of differences in TFR is the potential for ernment-sponsored efforts have successfully reversed the intragroup friction. Contemporary debates about immi- second demographic transition and produced TFRs high gration are, at least in part, a result of ethnocentric fears enough to sustain a population. As Phillip Longman puts as individuals encounter a different language, customs, it, “when cultural and economic conditions discourage and values. Nativism to one degree or another seems a parenthood, not even a dictator can force people to go constant corollary to the whole of US immigration histo- forth and multiply.”43 ry.38 Urbanization multiplies the potential for friction by Historically, the one major recent change in the almost increasing the size of conflicting groups. The difficulty of inexorable trajectory of the DT has been the result of the learning a new language, compounded by poverty among horror of the Second World War. Only after that slaughimmigrants, only furthers the potential for anti-immi- ter was there a significant change in TFR, a change that grant resentment. With immigrants come challenges involved most of the countries affected by the war. It was to long-held customs and practices. Religious practices called the “baby boom” and it reversed the TFR slide also change as new religions grow in adherents and are toward smaller families that had started in the late nineincreasingly manifested institutionally. Those of a more teenth and early twentieth centuries. It lasted a generation. secular mentality find the multiThere is another exception to plicity of religious expressions to be the general rule of declining ferproof that all religions are of equal tility. The title of a recent book by LCMS adults have — or perhaps no — value.39 What Eric Kaufmann summarizes the fewer children living at was once sacred is now questioned point by way of a question: Shall home with them than increasingly. the Religious Inherit the Earth?44 The the national average short answer is yes. He says: “Simply a. Will There Be Exceptions to This put, this book argues that religious or the average for all Demographic Trend? fundamentalists are on course to Other societies have faced demoProtestants. take over the world through demoggraphic decline and sought to raphy.”45 This is not quite as new address it.40 Demographers note that countries as diverse as Sweden and Singapore are as Kaufmann thinks. Rodney Stark cogently argues in sponsoring programs to encourage increased family his The Rise of Christianity that the higher fertility of size, offering services and financial incentives to women Christian women in comparison to pagans and Romans 46 to have more children. Such countries realize there will was a significant factor in the early church’s growth. not be enough “human capital” (that is, young work- That fits Kaufmann’s thesis: “Those embracing the here ing people) to support the aging.41 However, with the and now [the most secularized individuals and societies] are spearheading population decline, but individuals who shun this world are relatively immune to it.”47 He is not talking about the ordinarily religious, but those with 38 See Michael Barone, Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration religious commitments strong enough to pit them against Transformed America and Its Politics (New York: Crown Forum, 2013). their surrounding culture, those Niebuhr almost cer39 In 2008, 8.1 % of America claimed a religion other than Christianity, including Mormon (1.7%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.7%) as well as tainly would have categorized as “Christ against culture” all the completely non-Christian religious traditions (4.7%). As new religious types, although you don’t have to be Christian religions are introduced, some individuals find them appealing and to qualify. switch. Others find enough similarity to think that religious distinctions no longer matter and reject religion altogether. They become agnostics, atheists, and “spiritual but not religious” (16.1% of the United States) (Pew, Religious Landscape, 10).

42

Sandstroem, “Russia’s Baby Boom.”

40

43

Longman, “Return of Patriarchy,” 58.

It was a significant problem in the Roman Empire. See Phillip Longman, “The Return of Patriarchy,” Foreign Policy, no. 153 (March/ April 2006): 56. Rodney Stark comments on this extensively; The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1997), 115–128.

E.g., Longman, Empty Cradle, 52-67 and Yoshihara, Population Decline.

41

Eric Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (London: Profile Books, 2010), Kindle edition.

44

45

Ibid., 51.

46

Stark, Rise of Christianity, 115-128.

47

Kaufmann, Religious, Kindle location 63.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

11

So Kaufmann notes the population growth of the a. LCMS and US Age-Sex Demographics Old Order Amish and the Quiverfull movement among What, if anything, does such demographic change mean Christian groups, but also adds Mormons to the mix for the LCMS and its mission? My answers are based on before turning to Salafist Muslims (fundamentalists), and extrapolations from LCMS statistical reports and from finally to the mushrooming population of ultra-Ortho- other data that is available about the LCMS from Pew dox Jews.48 With Michael Blume he grudgingly admits Research’s “Religious Landscape Survey.”53 that “when it comes to Creationism vs. Intelligent Design, To get a helpful picture of the LCMS demographically, ‘evolutionary theorists brought up far more scientific we must start with race. As members of a church body arguments but committed believers in supernatural that is 95% non-Latino white (the highest percentage agents brought up far more children.’”49 He also concedes of any Christian tradition except the ELCA), the LCMS that “[r]eligious zealots are no more violent than social- must simply realize that we are representative of a shrinkists or anarchists.” His fear is elsewhere. “The greater ing demographic group.54 Not only are whites declining as threat is cultural: that fundamentala percentage of the population, nonism will replace reason and freedom Latino whites are also the group that with moral puritanism.”50 Or, as is declining most rapidly in terms of Five percent of LCMS Longman predicts: “If no alternative church involvement, as another Pew members live with an solution [to declining birthrates] study has shown. Pew’s 2000 study unmarried partner … can be found, the future will belong “‘Nones’ on the Rise” is blunt about to those who reject markets, reject disaffiliation in the United States, higher than the ELCA, learning, reject modernity, and reject which has only 3% of its noting that the increasing number freedom. This will be the fundamenof people, especially young people, members cohabitating.

51 talist moment.” leaving the church is not a universal Trends do not always continue, phenomenon across American races and Longman’s thesis must stand the and ethnicities. Rather, “[w]hen test of time. Moreover, no one expects rising religiosity to it comes to race … the recent change has been concenbe an overnight change. They accept that secularization trated in one group: whites.”55 The shrinkage does cross of attitudes will continue to dominate for some time;52 denominational lines. Such decline is not only true of the that overall decline in religiosity will not soon change; mainline, but also in Evangelicalism as a whole.56 and that an aging society is inevitable. Their point, rather, is that the highly religious will be important long-term 53 A disclaimer is necessary. The LCMS baptized membership is only exceptions to demographic decline and that the highly 1.4% of the total US population, and one cannot make too many assumptions about how well our population reflects the national religious will increasingly exercise the power of growing population given that we are a small sample. “Religious Landscape numbers. This growth of religious influence will occur Survey: Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic,” February 2008, 15, Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life, http://religions. primarily through child birth, not conversion. pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf. Later

4. The LCMS and Demographic Change — Implications for Theology and Mission

studies have fully confirmed the trends identified by Pew’s landmark work. See 2014 data, “Members of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod,” Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life, accessed September 13, 2016, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscapestudy/religious-denomination/lutheran-church-missouri-synod/.

54

48

Kaufmann’s comparison of Muslim vs. Christian growth is noteworthy: “The natural increase of Muslims was nearly double that of Christianity, allowing it to outpace Christianity despite the fact that Christianity trumped Islam 3:1 in the market for converts” (Kaufman, Religious, 120, Kindle location 2494). With regard to Israel, he notes that the ultra-Orthodox population has gone from a 20% share of the total population in 1960 to nearly 50% today (Kaufman, Religious, 210, Kindle location, 4113).

49

Kaufmann, Religious, Kindle location 274.

50

Ibid., 117.

51

Longman, Empty Cradle, 168–69.

52

Kaufman, Religious, 9–11, Kindle locations 450–503.

12

Ibid., 77.

55

“’Nones’ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation,” October 9, 2012, 21, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/. Cp. Michael Lipka, “Why America’s Nones Left Religion Behind,” Pew Research Center, August 24, 2016, accessed September 13, 2016, http:// www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/24/why-americas-nones-leftreligion-behind/.

See John S. Dickerson, The Great Evangelical Recession: 6 Factors That Will Crash the American Church … and How to Prepare (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), e-book, who concurs with Christian Smith’s estimates of the Evangelical population of the United States as only about 7-9% of the US population (25). Pew assumes a figure of about 26% (see “Religious Landscape,” 10), but the difference is definitional 56

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

groups in terms of age group proportions. Our level of aging is well above the average for Adult Populations by Age US non–Latino whites

18–29 20

wayRoman to try to get at our ratethe is mainline more roundother Protestants, and Catholics.

Webirth reflect churches in this area.

30–49 whites, 50–64 85+ 35

26

about, but at least it is specific to the LCMS. b. Birth Rate Note the following graph of LCMS membership 19

over fifty years. It is in five year increments from 1962 to 2012. number of births is unavoidable given the lower than average Thegoing graphforward goes back far enough to enable All Protestants 17 38 birth rate.

26 A low20 us to see the end of the baby boom generation Evangelicals 17 39 number 26of potential 19 mothers. However, we have no statistical basis to determine the average (those born from 1945–1964). US TFRs peaked around 1960 at 3.6,sodropped to 2.9assume in 1965, women in the LCMS, we can only thatand young LCMS women Mormon 24 42 birth rate 19 for individual 15 to 2.5 in 1970. From about 1975 on they have different birth to rates thanof the1.8, general white exceeding population. Another way to try Unaffiliated 31 40 will not 20 have markedly 8 fluctuated a low but never 2.1 significantly. The graph of baptized memberLCMS 11 32 to get 31 26rate is more roundabout, but at least it is specific to the LCMS. Note the at our birth ship suggests that the LCMS seemingly followed Data from Pew, “Religious Landscape Survey” (2008), pages 78 and 79, and following graph of LCMS membership over fiftyinyears. is in fiveunder year increments from 1962 to this trend, peaking 1972It at just 2.9 US Census 2010. million, and gradually declining thereafter.

2012.

Two facts indicate a declining LCMS birth rate.

Pew’s data indicates that the LCMS is 47% male and 53% female overall as compared to a 48% male to 52% female ratio. The entire Christian population shows a similar pattern of greater female than male participation.57 As for age, Pew’s “Religious Landscape” stats show the LCMS as one of the oldest religious groups in the United States.58 Note the accompanying compilation of data from Pew and the US census to see how the LCMS compares to the white population and to select other groups in terms of age group proportions. Our level of aging is well above the average for whites, other Protestants, and Roman The graph goes back far enough to enable us to see the end of the baby boom generation Catholics. We reflect the mainline churches in this area.

First, significant loss of baptized membership begins in b. Birth Rate while significant confirmed membership does to 2.9 in 1965, and (those born from 1977 1945–1964).

US TFRs peaked around 1960 at 3.6,loss dropped That comparative dearth of young adults has an obvious not begin until 1992 and even then trends downward to 2.5 in 1970. about 1975 on they have fluctuated to a low of 1.8, but never exceeding 2.1 implication for overall LCMS birth rate. A low number of From more slowly than baptized membership, a time spread births going forward is unavoidable given the lower than Thethat matches with membership typical confirmation ages.the InLCMS addition, significantly. graph of baptized suggests that seemingly followed average number of potential mothers. However, we have you can see that the percentage of baptized to confirmed this trend, peaking in 1972 at just underconsistently 2.9 million, and no statistical basis to determine the average birth rate for membership shrinks overgradually time. In declining the earlythereafter. Two individual women in the LCMS, so we can only assume 1960s, confirmed members were 72% of the total LCMS facts indicate a declining LCMS birth rate. First, significant loss of baptized membership begins that young LCMS women will not have markedly differ- membership. According to the best stats now, 78% of all ent birth rates than the general white population. Another LCMS baptized members are 20 also confirmed. Looking

from the perspective of the end of the baby boom, between 1972 and 2012 baptized LCMS membership rather than data-driven. Dickerson defines Evangelicals as those declined by 23.7% while confirmed membership declined who believe in “salvation by faith,” that the Bible is God’s Word and without error, and that Jesus is the Savior (23). See also his op-ed by 15.8% — meaning we were losing baptized memberpiece “The Decline of Evangelical America,” The New York Times, ship at about 150% of the rate of confirmed membership December 16, 2012, accessed November 5, 2014, http://www.nytimes. com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-decline-of-evangelical-america. loss. In noting such realities, LCMS Research Services html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. says this “usually” indicates an aging population.59 57 The 2007 and 2014 male-female ratios from Pew are identical.

Pew corroborates these extrapolations, showing that Protestants overall and Roman Catholics are at 46% male and 54% female (Pew, “Religious Landscape,” 95). That pattern reverses toward a LCMS adults have fewer children living at home with Roman Catholic

18

41

dearth of young adults has an obvious implication for overall LCMS 24That comparative 16

male majority in all other religions that Pew surveyed and in those who are unaffiliated with any religion.

58

Pew, “Religious Landscape,” 83.

LCMS Research Services, Forty Years of LCMS District Statistics (March 25, 2013), ii.

59

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

13

them than the national average or the average for all Protestants.60 As of 2007, 72% of LCMS members had no child at home; 11% had one child, 10% had two, and only 7% had three or more. Nationally the numbers for the total population were 65% with none, 13% with 1, 13% with two, and 9% with three or more.61 Additionally, as of 2014, 10% of the LCMS population was under the age of thirty, which does not bode well for future childbirths.62 c. Migration The LCMS is clearly dissimilar to the United States in terms of reflecting immigration, since the United States is less than 64% non-Latino white, while the LCMS is 95% non-Latino white.63 That 5% includes African, Asian, Hispanic, and various other immigrant Americans, so there has been some immigration effect, but it is minimal.

One reason for this is that the LCMS has little presence in the areas of the United States where minority groups live.

In terms of location, to a large extent, our present LCMS geography correlates with our history as a German immigrant church. The map nearby corroborates this.64 In white areas the LCMS is strongest (between 2 and 6% of the population). In the red areas, we are between 0.8 and 2.0%.

Yellow is three-tenths to eighttenths of 1% and green and blue are less than three-tenths of a percent. We are strongest in states that are not fast growing and weakest in the largest and most populous states. Pew gives percentages for LCMS membership: 64% is the Midwest vs. 7% in the Northeast, 13% in the West, and 16% in the South.65 The LCMS is similar to the general population, however, in more recent migration patterns. Over the past few decades, the Synod has experienced some shifting of its population to the southern United States, especially to the Southeast and to Texas. Texas experienced growth in 60

Pew, “Religious Landscape,” 87,

61

Ibid., 89.

62

Pew, “Members of the LCMS.”

baptized membership over thirty of the past forty years,66 as did Florida-Georgia and the Mid-South and Oklahoma Districts, while the Southeastern District experienced growth in twenty of the past forty years. In the districts where we are numerically strongest, we’ve experienced modest growth in several. The Nebraska District grew modestly for thirty of the past forty years (B-8), while there was modest growth for twenty of the forty years in the Missouri (B-4), Kansas (B-16), Rocky Mountain (B-16), and Central Illinois Districts (B-20).67 The mention of Midwestern districts in this mix hints that the population shifts that have occurred in the LCMS seem to have followed US trends in which most southern movement is due to whites leaving upper Midwest cities and the Northeast’s urban areas. Statistics from our districts in such areas tend to bear that out as well.68 Unfortunately, despite some growth in previous decades, no district has experienced overall numerical growth in the past ten years.

Not only are we not strongly present in heavily minority locales, we are also not strongly present in the areas of the

country where population is growing fastest overall, which includes many of those minority locales, but other areas as well. The map of projected population growth indicates the fastest growing areas of the country in dark blue.69 The dots show where our congregations are.

You see a strong cluster of LCMS congregations in zones that are pink or the lightest blue, where growth is negative or minimal.

However, while these hard demographic factors must account for a significant part of the LCMS’s decline, they are by no means able to account for all of it. We must remember that despite declining TFRs, the white population of the United States continued to grow through the last forty years. Only two years ago, in 2012, did the 66

LCMS Research Services, Forty Years, B-4, B-20, B-12.

67

Ibid., B-8, B-4, B-16, B-20 respectively.

68

64

Prepared by Ryan Curnutt, LCMS Office of Research and Statistics.

For examples from Forty Years, see Atlantic (about -40%, C-2), New England (about -35%, C-36), New Jersey (about -40%, C-38), Eastern (about -40%, C-8), Michigan (about -20%, C-22), Ohio (about -25%, C-48), NID (about -40%, C-44), SWD (about -30%, C-60), and English (about -30%, C-10). Atlantic, New England, and English experienced significant losses during the synod controversy in the 1970s, but the loss estimates here are based on decline since 1977.

65

Pew, “Religious Landscape,” 92.

69

63

According to the 2010 Census. See http://www.census.gov/prod/ cen2010/briefs/c2010br-05.pdf.

14

Prepared by Ryan Curnutt, LCMS Office of Research and Statistics.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

continuing spiral of low birthrates cause the death rate to exceed the number of births for non-Latino whites.70 But the LCMS decline goes back about forty years, not two.

Obviously, the problem is bigger than the lack of babies.

less than Roman Catholics or Pentecostals, but less also than Evangelicals. And our present geography makes us congregation-heavy where population is light.

All this makes it extremely unlikely, on the basis of the data, that the LCMS would be an exception to the rule of demographic decline among whites. There seems to be little evidence of a willingness or eagerness on the part of the LCMS membership as a whole to be counter-cultural.

It is hard to be anything but skeptical about a resurgence of the LCMS based on its present trends. It may be that our pastors are more purposefully countercultural than many other Christians, but that does not seem to have translated to the laity overall.

d. Indirect Demographic Effects What about the areas I referred to as indirect demographic effects, those other socio-cultural changes that correlate and are associated with core demographic change? The LCMS exhibits both similarities and dissimilarities in this area, too.

Take marriage and income, as examples. Pew’s statistics on marriage, which are LCMS-specific, are again relevant. They are helpful in terms of household and family information. Sixty percent of LCMS people are 5. LCMS Missions: Practice and married, higher than both the total Assumptions population or than other Protestants.

The numbers are discouraging. But In the midst of Five percent of LCMS members live we live by the gospel, not numbers. inter-ethnic conflict, with an unmarried partner, slightly Our church has one strength that lower than the national average of the unity of the Spirit amounts to more than any of her 6%, equal to Evangelicals as a group crossed human divides. weaknesses: our evangelical and who are also at 5%, but higher than catholic faith. Consider that here. As the ELCA, which has only 3% of its the Augustana reminds us, we know that the one, holy, members cohabitating.71 Our divorce rate is slightly below catholic, and apostolic church will not fail. Such confithe national average and the Protestant average. We have dence comes only on the basis of the power of the word about 35% more widowed members than the national and the word’s visible signs, baptism and Eucharist (AC average and one point more than the Protestant average.

VII). The church is still evident in Missouri. The church We have far fewer never-married adults — 11% for the stands under Christ and his mission to all nations.

LCMS vs. 19% for the national population and 17% for all The LCMS exhibited ongoing growth throughout most Protestants.72 of its history, up to the 1970s. Since then, we have known e. Will the LCMS Be an Exception? only persistent decline. Various factors might be cited — All of this indicates that when one compares the LCMS theological controversy and social change, for example to the US population overall, we are probably more cul- — but LCMS decline basically mirrors the decline of the turally similar than dissimilar to the rest of the white US non-Hispanic white population. Our mission efforts population. Pew’s LCMS data, for example, shows that since the 1970s continued the base pattern of planting on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and same- churches in the places where our people and people like us sex marriage, individual members of LCMS churches were moving. Some of our districts did well for a while tend to reflect the attitudes of the rest of the country.73 and many strong churches were planted and continue to Moreover, we have low fertility and are aging quickly just be planted, praise God. We should continue to reach out, like the rest of white America, or, indeed, more quickly planting churches where LCMS members are moving and than non-Hispanic whites as a whole. As for migration, where there are young couples and families. we are gaining very few of the new Americans overall, far But that is not enough. Indeed, in light of the changing demographics of the United States, a “cross-cultural” focus must become our highest priority. Outreach to those least 70 There were 12,000 more deaths than births for non-Hispanic whites in 2012. White population grew overall only because of European like us deserves the best of our thinking, our profound immigration (+188,000). See Roberts, “Census Benchmark.” commitment, and financial sacrifices. Far more important 71 Pew, “Religious Landscape,” 72–74. than preserving our institutions is the call of our Lord to 72 Ibid., 80. make disciples of the nations. In the new America, if our 73 Pew, “Members of the LCMS.”

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

15

church does not turn its attention outward, to those who are least like us, to our “Gentiles,” even those who count themselves as our enemies, we will not be faithful.

This means that we must ask the Lord to prepare workers for the following segments of America today.

1. “Minorities” and especially Latinos and other immigrants. Many, if not most, live in poor neighborhoods that we have forgotten. Some are highly educated and prosperous. They are all different from most of Missouri — red, yellow, black, brown, and every color. It will not be easy to earn their trust. Yes, many are firmly committed to Rome or Pentecostalism. Yet many others are unchurched and non-Christian.

2. The unmarried — those who have postponed marriage, or scorned it, or were never blessed with it; the divorced, the single moms (and dads), the lonely, and the many widows. We will need to value, teach, and model holy marriage for them, but we must not make marriage a requirement for discipleship in Christ’s holy family.

3. And, of course, those generations in their 30s and under, including those who stand opposed to faith and those who claim a faith that has dispensed with the church. Many will view us with hostility. And many are our kids and grandkids. We cannot abandon them to Satan’s empty secularism.

Rodney Stark reminds us that Christianity in its first centuries had that very same challenge — a challenge that was met not only because of its message, but also its manner of life. It brought “charity and hope” to the poor, an “expanded sense of family,” and new attachments to cities full of strangers, orphans, and widows. In the midst of inter-ethnic conflict, the unity of the Spirit crossed human divides.74 These are salutary and hopeful reminders of the church’s strength when she proclaims and shares the mercies of God. The Rev. Larry Vogel serves as associate director of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations.

74

Stark, Rise of Christianity, 161.

16

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Discover how the LCMS is assisting with the revitalization

Reaching the Latino Mission Field: USA

of Latino congregations right here at home.

by Carlos Hernandez

New Life for an Aging Latino Congregation

T

city, Brownsville, like other Texas municipalities on the Mexican border, is welded together economically, educationally, socially and politically with Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico.

While El Calvario’s location is strategic for engaging in ministries of mercy and, under the Spirit, poised for gospel proclamation, it has never been a candidate for becoming financially independent because Brownsville is a very poor city.

he Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s network-funded church-planting initiative, Mission Field: USA, is breathing new life into the revitalization of Latino congregations in their ongoing efforts to respond to the challenge of proclaiming the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. The urgency in reaching Latinos for Christ, especially the US-born second and third generations, is intensified by their explosive population growth. As of 2014, the US Latino population The 1990 census revealed that the U.S. had 284 was recorded at 55.3 million, making people of Hispanic Metropolitan Statistical Areas (Urban areas over or Latino origin the nation’s largest ethnic or racial 100,000 population with at least one core city of minority.1 over 50,000), and that of these 284 metropolises The first of several Latino congregations slated for Brownsville ranked 284th, dead last, in average per revitalization and resourced for church planting through capita income. In other words, Brownsville had their respective districts in partnership with the Mission narrowly beaten out the McAllen-Edinburg and Field: USA initiative is El Calvario Lutheran Church, Laredo MSA to earn the dubious distinction of beBrownsville, Texas. Organized in 1937 with the finaning America’s poorest city. Naturally, then, efforts cial and prayerful support of the LCMS and programs to assist the impoverTexas District, its founding pastor, the ished are of tremendous importance Rev. Harry Smith, energetically labored Like all US-based to Brownsville.2 in the fertile mission field located on the mission outreach United States – Mexico border.

A New Texas District/Mission

Strategically Poised but Not Economically Sustainable

efforts to other stateside cultures, activating missions among and by Latinos has always been a stewardship challenge.

El Calvario’s location is amazingly strategic in the heart of downtown Brownsville, several blocks from the infamous “wall” constructed to deter undocumented immigration from Mexico, Central and South America, as well as other world populations. However, as a twin

Field: USA Partnership Infuses New Life

The LCMS Texas District, cognizant of Brownsville’s poverty, invested many dollars for many decades in order to continue a vital Lutheran presence in this poorest of American cities, blocks from the Mexican border and gateway to Central and South America. In recent years, precious LCMS Texas District mission dollars were urgently

1

Renee Stepler and Anna Brown, “Statistical Portrait of Hispanics in the United States,” Pew Research Center, April 19, 2016, http://www. pewhispanic.org/2016/04/19/statistical-portrait-of-hispanics-in-theunited-states-key-charts/.

William L. Adams and Anthony K. Knopp, Portrait of a Border City: Brownsville, Texas (Austin: Eakin Press, 1997), 48–49.

2

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

17

needed in equally important mission fields and financial subsidy was, understandably, discontinued.

However, studied and collegial plans and consultations with LCMS Texas District mission staff and boards infused new life and possibilities through the Mission Field: USA strategy. Mission Executive Rev. Michael Newman and Mission Field: USA Director Rev. Steve Schave worked closely together to affect this collegial, mutually agreed upon new start. Close collaboration between district and Synod offices continues. The LCMS Texas District, El Calvario — as a member of the district — and the network-funded Mission Field: USA initiative will continue to work collaboratively.

New Mission Initiatives from an Existing Congregational Base Rev. Steve Schave describes this partnership that has given new birth, vision and hope to El Calvario as a base from which to initiate a campus ministry at the nearby University of Texas — Rio Grande Valley and a new church plant in north Brownsville. This is a ministry-planting role that is normally reserved for larger, wealthier congregations. The utilization of a strategically located small congregation in a mission planting role is a pilot project that will be closely watched. As Schave notes:

Joining Hands to Activate Mission The support, prayers and ongoing collaboration of the LCMS Texas District with Mission Field: USA is making all the difference as the project begins with the installation on July 31, 2016, of the Rev. Dr. Antonio Lopez. Mission Executive Rev. Michael Newman, a mission and ministry area facilitator for the LCMS Texas District whose area regional responsibilities include Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, expressed his hopes for the blessings of this Mission Field: USA/LCMS Texas District partnership based at El Calvario:

Launching two new ministries out of El Calvario Lutheran church will be a great blessing to the wonderful people of El Calvario, its neighborhood and the greater Brownsville community. … We’re Mission Field: praying that through our partnerUSA is breathing ship with the LCMS in Brownsville, new life into the many people will receive Christ’s revitalization of love, come to know Jesus as their Latino congregations Savior and be activated in mission for Him.4

in their ongoing efforts to respond to the challenge of proclaiming the pure gospel of Jesus Christ.

Brownsville will be a pilot project for Mission Field: USA. It is an excellent location, as it is a modern-day Ephesus, a port city that is a gateway into Mexico and Latin America. … There are great human-care needs to serve the poor, campus ministry with a primarily Hispanic student body (University of Texas — Rio Grande Valley) and it is a burgeoning area on the Mexican border with growing medical and technology industries there. … By the grace of God, we will be sending a domestic missionary to plant a new church, start a campus ministry and to use mercy houses on campus for human care.

This will be a place where people can bring mission teams to come and serve, and [we] pray for support of this initiative in a new era of LCMS Missions.3

Like all US-based mission outreach efforts to other stateside cultures, activating missions among and by Latinos has always been a stewardship challenge. The Mission Field: USA partnerships with districts and with donors throughout the United States that recognize the presence of 55.3 million Latinos as the largest of our domestic, stateside missions are enabling new Latino mission starts in strategic US locations that are otherwise not economically possible.

The Rev. Dr. Carlos Hernandez is director of Church and Community Engagement for the LCMS Office of National Mission.

3

Roger Drinnon, “Sincere Care and Small Catechism Bolster Hispanic Outreach,” Lutherans Engage the World 4, no. 2 (November 12, 2015): 19.

18

4

Ibid., 19.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Despite rural and small-town struggles, these outposts are

The Presence of God

by Todd Kollbaum

still on the receiving end of Christ’s work through His word.

I

n his “Theological Statement for Mission in are located in what are considered rural and small-town the 21st Century,” President Matthew Harrison areas. These congregations are found in areas throughout the entire synod. These areas are states, “Where the Holy Trinity is designated as having a population of present via the Gospel and received Demographic 15,000 or less and account for over half in faith, there cannot but be Witness of the total congregations in the LCMS. (martyria), Mercy (diakonia), Life studies show that Together (koinonia). These three reflect there are millions of Interestingly, these congregations are also made up of over half of the memGod’s very being as Creator, Redeemer people living in and bers of the LCMS. and Sanctifier, and they encompass His around rural areas Demographic studies have shown holy and gracious will for all in Christ and small towns that the LCMS has been experiencing Jesus — namely that all come to believe a long period of membership decline. in and bear witness to Christ, reflect who need to hear Losses amount to nearly 20% of total divine compassion and live together in this good news. membership over the last forty years. forgiveness, love and joy in the Church Much of this decline is seen affecting (AC I).”1 This statement is certainly encouraging to the church, rural and small-town congregations. These congregations reminding us that the onus of the work of the church also face the added stress of shrinking budgets, aging doesn’t lie in the wisdom or cunning of man but in populations, and economic instability, as well as a severe the very presence of God, working through His word. shortage of resources. They find that they are not only However, to varying degrees, the church still struggles economically challenged, but also physically challenged with getting in its own way of doing the work it is called due to a lack of community services, available workforce, to do. This is especially acute within those congregations and manpower to carry out ministry objectives. Couple that are called to “be the church” in rural and small-town these factors with a decreasing retention rate of conplaces. Because of a host of factors that are enumerated firmed youth and these congregations find themselves in below, these congregations often lose sight of the call to a crisis level of need, making it a challenge to keep them viable. Many have been forced to shift into survival mode, be salt and light within this darkened world.

There are currently in The Lutheran Church— simply trying to keep their doors open for the saints who Missouri Synod (LCMS) over 3,200 congregations that remain as members.

Given these factors, a grave missiological concern is at play in these congregations. Because they have moved 1 Matthew C. Harrison, “A Theological Statement for Mission in the 21st Century,” Journal of Lutheran Mission 1, no. 1 (March 2014): 60.

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into survival mode, many of these congregations have lost sight of what it means for them to be The Church.

Therefore, they need to be reminded, encouraged, and instructed in such a way that they can see clearly the biblical model necessary to carry out the work they have been called to accomplish, that work which focuses upon proclaiming Christ throughout the world.

LCMS Rural & Small Town Mission In living out (RSTM) is seeking to do just that — to their vocations, support and encourage rural and small town congregations to pick up their the members of mantle and forge ahead to do the work these vital mission they are called to do. Through educaoutposts are tional offerings such as our Engaging equipped to share Your Community events, these congrethe love of Christ gations are trained and encouraged to use their First Article gifts of reason and and His message of planning to consider ways in which they hope. might reach out to their respective communities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

While this missiological picture might look bleak, the fact is that these congregations still have very important and vital kingdom work to be accomplished.

Demographic studies show that there are millions of people living in and around rural areas and small towns who need to hear this good news. Indeed, these congregations are uniquely poised to care for their Jerusalem.

Smaller communities offer an opportunity for fellowship and relationship building that is not always available in a larger setting. Herein, congregations can take advantage of their visibility in the community to engage it in real and meaningful ways.

These activities are further bolstered through ongoing training with LCMS RSTM monthly webinars, articles, and theme-specific training events offered through the districts for hands-on application. Therefore, in living out their vocations, the members of these vital mission outposts are equipped to share the love of Christ and His message of hope. Certainly, there is no solution that works for every congregation, but LCMS RSTM seeks to assist congregations to tailor their planning to best suit their scenario while building upon common factors found in most rural and small town congregations.

The Rev. Todd Kollbaum is director of LCMS Rural & Small Town Mission.

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

The LCMS has a huge opportunity to prepare, equip

Serving Jesus at Church and in Community

by Roosevelt Gray

and deploy pastors, deaconesses, educators and other professional church workers to the African and African American communities in North America.

“Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35).

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living and nursing home facility. She or Deaconess Dorcel Dowdell, graduated in 2010. a quick run to the grocery ‘By the grace of God “I was part of the first group of store turned into an opporI made it through the deaconesses in 2003. There were tunity to reconnect with a woman seminary. It was a ten of us. I was the only Africanfrom the local homeless shelter. “I American and I was going back to was just making a quick trip, and she great experience to be school twenty-three years after I called out my name. At first I didn’t synodically trained, received my master’s in library scirecognize her,” Dowdell said. “I had to have the firm ence. It was a great experience. I volunteered at the Sparrow’s Nest for theological foundation, made friends easily to form study over a year and had met her. She was and to have made pastor groups, I loved the professors, I liked relatively young, in her forties, with staying in the dorm when I didn’t several health issues. Because she was and deaconess friends want to drive back to Toledo, and I so ill, she lost her house and ended for life.’ loved the ‘high church’ of Chapel. It up on the streets. was wonderful. And when the going “Now she has an apartment and is getting her health back,” she explained. “She asked about got tough and I wondered why I was there, the Holy Spirit church, and I offered to pick her up. I pick up two other was right there to see me through,” said Dowdell.

Although St. Philip is a small congregation, “we have ladies too. So she came to church with us Sunday, which mighty mission works in our hearts,” she said. With the was wonderful.”

Dowdell had been active in her church, St. Philip direction of the Rev. Mark Hill, Dowdell oversees the Lutheran Church, Toledo, Ohio, for many years when an church’s group of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary elder suggested she study to become a deaconess. While League; parish education, which includes Bible studies working full-time as a librarian, she took classes part-time and Vacation Bible School; the Toledo Blind Outreach at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Center and their programs; special services; Thrivent from 2003–2007. She then interned from 2007–2009 at projects; mission outreach projects and programs; hosLutheran Village at Wolf Creek in Toledo, an independent pital and home visitation; and serves as secretary for

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the church council. In addition, she volunteers in the community.

In January, thanks to a mission outreach grant, St. Philip Lutheran Church was able to present several programs and services to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. In April, with the coordinators of the Toledo Blind Outreach Center (TBOC), which meets at St. Philip monthly, they hosted the Rev. David Andrus, a blind pastor from St. Louis, who presented a workshop for volunteers, members and participants of TBOC. Another outreach effort this summer was “Hope Experience,” a parking lot service for the community. “We went door to door leaving our announcements, placed an ad in the paper, had a guest pastor from Detroit, and a jazz-gospel band, all in an effort to share the gospel with our neighbors. We had a gathering of fifty people, several of whom were visitors,” Dowdell said.

Dowdell would love to recruit more African-American women to become deaconesses. “There is so much work to be done in the Kingdom. It’s hard work and you must be completely dedicated to the Lord and the work he has laid out for you to do, but it is so worthwhile.

“I’m grateful the Holy Spirit led this elder to approach me, and by the grace of God I made it through the seminary. It was a great experience to be synodically trained, to have the firm theological foundation, and to have made pastor and deaconess friends for life,” she said.

The 2015 U.S. Census Bureau estimated that there are 46,282,080 African Americans in the United States, meaning that 14.3% of the total American population of 321.4 million is black. This includes those who identify as “Black only” and as “Black in combination with another race.” The “Black only” category by itself totaled 42.6 million African Americans, or 13.3% of the total population.

What a great opportunity for the LCMS to prepare, equip and deploy pastors, deaconesses, educators and other professional church workers to the African and African American communities in North America, especially under the new Mission Field: USA initiative.

“And he said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’” (Luke 10:2).

The Rev. Dr. Roosevelt Gray, Jr. is director of Black Ministry for the LCMS Office of National Mission.

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Theological Framework of City as Mission Field

Why does the church need to return to the city?

by Jeffrey Pulse

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Shepherd of the City is a church in the urban hy am I writing this article? I realize this is a strange way to begin. However, it is core of Fort Wayne. Not quite the same as Baltimore, a crucial question that necessitates an answer Philadelphia, Chicago, or St. Louis, but when you come from the beginning. What credentials do I possess that to church early on Easter Sunday to clean up the bottles would encourage a reader to trust my contributions to and syringes from the parking lot, you know you are not the subject? What do I know about this topic of “urban in rural Iowa anymore. These past eight years have been a ministry,” or any topic concerning the city as mission steep learning curve for my family and me. I have learned field? These are good and reasonable questions — a lot and am still learning.

I have learned that we live in a broken world, a broken questions that I ask myself on a regular basis. As I attempt world with broken cities and broken to give answer, I am certain the answers people. Yes, I know you know this. will only bring up more questions of a We act as if the Yes, I learned it at seminary. Yes, it is similar nature. people are the true wherever you go and wherever I grew up on a cow farm in Iowa you look. But in rural ministry and — rural ministry should be my thing! problem, as if the along the tree-lined streets of suburI began my college years studying to inner city is the bia, people hide their brokenness. They be a veterinarian. When I could no culprit. pretend there are no problems behind longer “Jonah” my way free, I went the white picket fences and the two to Concordia Teacher’s College in Seward, Nebraska, for a teaching degree and ended up at car garages. Problems are not for the community, not for Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne because the world to see — they are personal. Certainly there are I was afraid of the big city of St. Louis. When I received problems, but “we are sucking it up,” “we are handling my first call, it was back to the cornfields and cow pas- them our own way,” “we are receiving professional advice” tures of rural Iowa — my comfort zone. There were 590 — nothing to see here … move along. And so the façade people in our thriving metropolis. After 9½ years it was remains intact, unscathed, shiny, and pretty.

In the inner city, in the urban core, brokenness hits on to Bremerton, Washington, a navy town on the Kitsap Peninsula across the water from Seattle. You could see you upside the head with the force of a two by four.

Seattle but you did not have to make the journey. Then, Brokenness is not a pretty Band-Aid on a little boo-boo; after 12½ years, it was back to Fort Wayne and the semi- it is an open, bleeding sore. It is there for all the world, nary. This is not exactly the urban ministry portfolio you all the city, all the community to see. In the city, brokenness is inescapable. You cannot turn a corner or close might expect from the writer of an article such as this.

However, a funny thing happened when I returned your eyes and it all disappears. There is no clicking the to Fort Wayne. I realized that I missed the parish des- heels, reciting the mantra, “There’s no place like home, perately, so after one year when I was asked to serve as there’s no place like home,” because this is home, home vacancy pastor of Shepherd of the City Lutheran Church to so many. The only way to escape the brokenness of the in downtown Fort Wayne, I jumped at the opportunity. inner core is to leave it behind, flee the city, hide in the suburbs, take up hobby farming, and that has been the That was over eight years ago.

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option chosen by many who have such options. It has also hide behind the picket fences. been the option chosen by many churches in our history.

There is a story, a true story as it was recounted to me, Get out! Run away! which took place in New York City many years ago now.

Of course, that leaves the city broken. Nothing has It seems that one of the taller buildings in the city began been solved, no attempts have been made to deal with to develop some very strange and concerning cracks in the reality. The only issue that has been addressed is that the concrete work on the 32nd floor. Obviously, this is not of our own fears. Now, outside the city we join others in good. The first thing the owners of the building did was hiding our own brokenness as we avoid the broken truth call in some engineers to check out what was going on. of others. Flight and avoidance are responses, but they are The engineers set about the task of trying to decipher the not solutions. And we know this, and we feel guilty. problem. It was obvious that the cracks were structural in Guilt is the great motivator. We feel guilty about leav- nature so there was real reason for concern. ing the city behind. We feel guilty about those people When this word concerning the structural nature of suffering in poverty. We feel guilty about the homeless, the cracks got back to the owners of the building, they the hungry, the disenfranchised, and the victims. We feel immediately came over to find out what the engineers guilty about all those broken people living in a broken had discovered. They took the elevator to the 32nd floor, place. And, in our guilt, we decide to fix things. but the engineers were nowhere to be found. One of the When my children were little they liked to play with secretaries told them that she had heard they were someballoons. One day they came home from a birthday party where in the basement of the building. The owners were a with balloons — three balloons, and then, soon, two bal- bit puzzled by this, but they got back on the elevator and loons, then one balloon. This is when I began to worry. took it down to the first basement. They looked around So, I did what dads do. I lined them up — no engineers. So they went down to for the lecture, for the talk. I warned the second basement — no engineers.

A word and them to be careful or they would soon They tried the third basement — no sacrament ministry be down to no balloons. It is no surprise engineers. Finally, in the fourth and that goes forth from deepest basement they found the engias to what happened next. They messed around in all the wrong places in all neers poking around. The first thing the altar out onto the wrong ways. They did what I told the owners asked them was what they the street brings them not to do and the remaining balwere doing deep in the basement of about change. loon popped. And along with the pop the building when the problem was on came the flooded eyes, dripping noses, the thirty-second floor. Not so, said the and pitiful whines, but this time it took a different direc- engineers, and they showed the owners what they had tion. One of them grabbed the pieces of the balloon in his discovered — missing bricks! As it turned out, lots of hands and led the procession to me. He held the pieces missing bricks. out to me and said, “Daddy, fix it!” I am not helpless in the After an investigation, they learned that one of the area of repairing broken toys and such, but this was a bit maintenance men would come to the basement each day above my pay grade. before he went home from work and he would knock out So it is that we approach the city. In our guilt we a couple of bricks and put them in his lunch bucket and decide to fix it — we need to fix it. And we try; we try to take them home. When the authorities went to his home, fix the people. We feed the hungry, we house the home- they found that over the course of time he had built a less, we clothe the naked, we free those imprisoned by BBQ grill, a patio, and a nice brick wall across his entire drugs and alcohol with programs and treatment centers back yard. He had also removed a lot of bricks from the … we try to fix the people. Then, we try to fix the city. We basic foundation of the building. But the only place the try to rebuild it. We restore the neighborhoods. We renew problem had shown itself, thus far, was on the 32nd floor! the communities. We renovate the abandoned houses. We The inner city and urban core is a messed up, conrejuvenate the squalor. In our guilt, and yes, out of a sense fused place. So many problems, so many issues, so of Christian duty and love, we try to fix the city. We try to many man-made disasters, so many tragedies, so many fix the brokenness of the city by sending in resources, but heart-wrenching stories and we wonder, “What is the then we back away and go back to the two car garages and problem?” At whose feet do we lay the blame? Where

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

do we go to fix the mess? How do we best go about the It is the same problem on the farm and in the burbs. It restoration and repair? Children killing children, adults is the same problem around the world. Wherever human killing adults and children, sexual abuse, drug abuse, gang beings are found, the problem is sin. The problem is the violence, rude, crude and illegal behavior, murder and same … the problem is sin, manifested in ways not so difmayhem … and our reaction? ferent. It tends to be more a matter of degree and volume, Our first reaction is to blame. The reactions of soci- a matter of visibility and acceptability, but the problem is ety, of governments, of communities, even of churches, universal, an all mankind problem — sin. have been predictable. Finger pointing, “I told you so” If sin is the problem, what is the solution? The soluattitudes, political posturing and agendas, guilt trips and tions that have been developed, the solutions that man demands, and then our second reaction is to fix it! Fix the has created for this problem have proven woefully inadbrokenness, fix the people, fix the city! And so, once again equate. Of course, most of these “solutions” indicate an we feed the people, we house them, we clothe them, we unwillingness to acknowledge the true problem of sin free them from drugs and alcohol. And we rebuild the and so they are doomed to fail. If we provide food and city. We restore it, we renew it, we renovate it, we rejuve- clothing there will be no more hunger and nakedness. If nate it. However, we are fixing the problem with plaster in we provide housing there will be no more homelessness. the cracks on the 32nd floor.

If we give away stuff there will be no more stealing. If we Our repair efforts may make us feel better, they may provide health and wellness screenings and medical help allow us to avoid the guilt that plagues us, they may ener- there will be no more unhealthy living and unhealthy gize our members for human care ministries, they may choices. How has that been working? And because it has even prove helpful in the short term, not been working, we decide to do the but these efforts are simply putting same thing more vigorously. More help, Confession and plaster in the cracks on the 32nd floor. more money, more welfare … this is not absolution that flows the recipe for success. Rather, it resemLooks good, feels good, does good … from our risen Lord for a while, but those cracks keep reapbles the definition of insanity. pearing and we are always surprised I am not saying these efforts are and Savior changes and troubled. What is wrong with those people, and changed without merit at some level. It is good, people? What is the problem with that right and salutary to reach out and help. people change neighborhood?

It is a good practice and a biblical model neighborhoods.

We act as if the people are the probto help one’s neighbor. But unless we lem, as if the inner city is the culprit. acknowledge and address the real probWell, the truth — popular or not — is that the people are lem of sin, we are simply putting bandages on a cancer. not the problem, and the inner city is not the problem. We are filling the cracks with plaster on the 32nd floor.

The problem is sin! We know this. We know that sin is There is one solution for sin — all sin. One solution, the dividing wall of hostility. We know that sin is a corro- and it is not the “social” gospel that we employ too fresive and destructive force in the midst of this world. We quently in the inner city. The solution is the gospel of know that sin is responsible for all manner of disturbing, Jesus Christ! Here is the “Theological Framework of the deviant, and disgusting behavior. And we know that sin City as Mission Field”: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has kills — slowly or quickly — we know sin brings death. We come into our world and taken man’s burden of sin to the know this. cross at Calvary. He paid the price for our sin. Not with We should know that ignoring or denying the foun- gold or silver, but with his holy and precious blood. Jesus dational problem of sin will not make it fade away and Christ has washed away our sin so that we might be his disappear. We should know that covering over sin with people and live and walk in his paths. plaster in the cracks on the thirty-second floor is no real But this is the same “Theological Framework for solution. We should know that if sin and its reality in Mission” everywhere … yes it is! It is the exact same our world are not addressed we can prepare for another because sin is the cause, it is the foundational issue that failure, another battle lost. We should know this, and I stands in the way of a right relationship with our Lord believe we do, but we keep trying to “fix” things without and God. The same issue, the same problem, because acknowledging the real problem — the problem of sin. we are all one people, created and sustained by the One

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God who sent his Son to deal with this problem of sin.

The theological framework does not change with location or economic status. The theological framework of our work in the city must be the same as our work in the suburbs, the same as our work in the rural setting, the same as our work around the world. If it is not, then we continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Unfortunately, we have a history of reversing the order, which begs the questions, “Do we understand the real problem?” “Do we believe that the word of God does what it says?” “Are we confident enough to truly invest in our mission to the city?”

In our cities and their urban cores, food pantries and homeless shelters have replaced churches. Food pantries and shelters are important, but the order has been reversed. If there is no church from which these services flow, how do we address the real issue, the foundational problem? If there is no church presence in the community, how is the gospel preached and confession and absolution provided? If there is no church building standing in the midst of the chaos, how will they know the presence of God in their troubles and trauma?

Where is the church? You may say that the “church” is the people of God, whether they live in the neighborhood or not, and you are absolutely correct. Certainly, we believe, teach, and confess this very truth — the church is those who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, wherever they may be found. And I would never suggest that those people who come from outside the inner city to minister to the needs inside are not the presence of the church, but when the “church” goes home, the people are left confused and they wonder … where is the church?

No steeples piercing the sky, pointing to heaven; no bells ringing, calling to worship; no structure in the midst of the hood providing sanctuary; no physical symbol of a hoped-for spiritual reality. Where is the church? The physical has always helped us to see and understand the spiritual. Consider how the “city” is viewed in God’s word.

“City” in Scripture is focused around two things: earthly Jerusalem and heavenly Jerusalem. Earthly Jerusalem is the place where God dwells in his temple.

Early on, with tabernacle and then with temple, God established his presence with his people by being in the center of the camp, the center of the city. And he did it with a physical structure that would point to the spiritual reality of God dwelling with man, of God being truly present in their midst. God dwells in the midst of his people and his throne room is the Holy of Holies in the

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temple in the city. The “church” is visible in the midst of the people, in the midst of the city.

Why does the Son of God become flesh and tabernacle among us? Why does he come and reach out to the outcasts, the sick and diseased, the impoverished and destitute, the prostitutes and lepers? Why? Because these people have been separated from the temple — they cannot come to the dwelling place of God — so, God comes to them. Jesus, the new temple, comes to them, in their midst, physically before their eyes.

And what of the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of God, the city on the hill, the courts of heaven, the place where God dwells and where we will dwell with him, in his midst around his throne? When the people of Israel looked upon the temple in Jerusalem, they were reminded of a greater reality. They were reminded that God was dwelling with them, but also that they would one day be dwelling with God in the heavenly mansions prepared. The physical presence of the temple in their midst reminded them of this eternal reality and they had hope, even when the enemies were knocking at the gates.

This is the pattern established by God in Holy Scripture and it is this pattern that we re-examine and revisit as we consider the city as mission field. The church needs to return to the city, not just the people, but also the building and a worshiping community of faith. In order to stand firm in the city, we must first return to the city with mission eyes wide open. And not just in thought, word, and deed, but also with the real presence of God’s church in the midst of it all.

From the physical community called “church,” outreach, mission, and ministry flow forth. This reality is powerful and the symbolism is just as powerful. “God has not abandoned us. The ‘church’ has not left us.” “The God who provides us with hope as our sins are washed away; the God who pours out his grace upon us through word and sacrament; this God, our LORD dwells with us in this city so that one day we may dwell with him in the courts of the Heavenly City.”

Stand firm in the city! See the “city” as a mission field, see the “city” with mission eyes, not because the inner city is more important, but rather because the urban core is equally as important as any mission field, because it is a place where people dwell. Stand firm in the city by being a physical presence in its midst. The Church, physical and spiritual — from that place the hungry are fed, the thirsty receive a cup of water, the naked are clothed, the homeless are housed, the sick are healed, those in prison are visited

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

— these acts of physical mercy flow forth from the physical presence of God’s church in the midst.

I believe that the church, especially The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), is uniquely situated for the mission field of the city. The LCMS is uniquely situated to reach out to, and to reach back into, the urban core of our cities. Whether this is accidental, intentional, or intuitive I cannot say; however, our current direction and focus, even developments, will prove critically important.

Our emphasis on a ministry of mercy and the language of mercy has reentered the church. By the very definition of mercy, it demands that we reenter the city, and not just a “mission trip,” but even more as a physical mission field with churches planted and worship services that teach and proclaim the mercy of Christ from which our mercy must always flow. Christ’s ministry of mercy was especially directed toward the widows, the orphans, the sick, the lame, the blind, etc. In other words, the impoverished outcasts of the world who find themselves separated from the church by their situation. The language of Scripture used to identify the coming Messiah in both Old and New Testaments is, “The lame shall walk, the blind shall see, the prisoners will be set free. …” These are acts of mercy and they are the specific marks of the Messiah. I believe them to also be the acts of mercy that identify those who believe, teach, and confess this Messiah — the church!

The inner city, the urban core, abounds with opportunities to be Christ-like.

Another development in the LCMS that puts us in an enviable position as we are about the work of the kingdom in the city is the resurgence of the role of deaconess and parish nurse. When I first began to serve as pastor of Shepherd of the City Lutheran Church, everyone was nice, cordial, and happy that I was there. They treated me well, respected me as pastor, and smiled when they shook my hand at the end of the service, but it was obvious that the women of the congregation were being careful. They liked me, but did not yet trust me or their trust in me still needed to be verified before they would open up. One year later, our first deaconess arrived on the scene and began to serve at the church, and in one week, she knows everything! The women of the congregation immediately take her into their confidence — they trust her. It took me over four years to even begin to approach this level of trust. There are many reasons for this reality, but the role of deaconess has proven invaluable to our work in the city.

I believe the availability of deaconesses and parish nurses

will be an integral component to the greater church’s outreach to the inner city mission field.

The mercy focus and the role of deaconess and parish nurse are important parts of the inner city as mission field. However, they are most effective when they flow from the community of faith within the community.

All of the challenges and opportunities can be best met by taking the church and replanting it in the city where it once stood as a witness and symbol of God’s presence with his people. From this perspective, the real problem of sin can be dealt with in the way that God has provided — through a faithful word and sacrament ministry. A word and sacrament ministry that goes forth from the altar out onto the street brings about change. Confession and absolution that flows from our risen Lord and Savior changes people, and changed people change neighborhoods.

The Rev. Professor Jeffrey Pulse teaches in the exegetical department of Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind., and also serves as vacancy pastor of Shepherd of the City Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne.

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Engaging the World in the Incubator of Ideas

What is our responsibility with regard to LCMS youth as they venture off to college?

by Marcus T. Zill

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s we prepare to celebrate the 500th (5.9%) are also increasing.1 Also, like unto the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the anniversary of the Reformation, we are reminded that big things happen when those who dare to university is a gathering of people from many races and witness to the truth of God’s word on a university campus nations. Since the early 1950s, a slow but steady silent don’t shy away from the public arena. While not all ideas migration has taken place to our shores from the four are conceived in the academic square, many of them — corners of the world not to access US healthcare, or to both good and bad — are certainly powdered, diapered, necessarily escape persecution, but to take advantage of nourished, and even burped there. Thinking happens our US system of higher education.

According to the Institute of International Education, where thinkers are.

The Lutheran church cannot escape the great incu- a little over sixty years ago there were only 34,000 internabators of ideas; she was born on the academic turf of tional students on US soil. Today there are nearly 975,000 a German university at Wittenberg. Throughout her international students enrolled on US campuses, and this number is increasing exponentially history she has not forsaken the at the rate of about 8–10 percent a campus though she has not always Almost 28% of all year. When including dependent placed adequate resources there. incoming freshman family members, it is not a stretch to The time for this to change is now. say that there are roughly two milThe stakes are simply too high, and today list “no religious the ever-multiplying mission and preference” on studies of lion internationals populating our campus communities. mercy opportunities are simply rising college freshmen.

The top four countries are China, too plentiful.

India, South Korea, and Saudi Like unto Athens of Acts 17, the university is a place permeated with worldly philosophy Arabia, the first three making up half of all international and religion. It is not a matter of there being religion on students in the United States. The largest increases are campus. Our young people will be ministered to, but from the Asian corridor, and increasingly the Middle East, Northern Africa, and especially Latin America and ministered to by whom, and ministered to with what?

We have a solemn responsibility to help keep our own the Caribbean.2 In one short generation we have witnessed an unprecprecious sheep in the fold as they venture off to college.

The wisdom of the world is on full display in the academic edented surge of international students on US soil, many quad and the wolf is a welcome recruiter there. In addition of whom come from countries presently closed to our to being subject to an endless matrix of secular progressive missionaries, or where our work might otherwise be hinideology, our precious youth will be tempted to forsake dered. These international students, by the nature of their their faith, and far too often many will lose it as the word of reason for being here, are some of the most highly gifted and intelligent people from their countries.

God is increasingly marginalized and mocked.

As we continue to slide into a post-Christian era of influence here in the United States, the impact upon 1 See the latest results of this fifty year continuous survey sponsored our youth has been simply staggering. Almost 28% of all by The Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University incoming freshman today list “no religious preference” of California, Los Angeles: http://www.heri.ucla.edu/monographs/ TheAmericanFreshman2014.pdf. The religious preference results begin on studies of rising college freshmen. This has doubled in on p. 9. only one generation. The percentages of those who addi- 2 The latest date on Open Doors from the Institute of International tionally identify themselves as agnostic (8.3%) and atheist Education can be found at http://www.iie.org/en/Research-andPublications/Open-Doors#.

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Every year these internationals are temporarily uprooted from their familiar social, economic, cultural, and religious surroundings and transplanted here on the colleges of this land. While our international mission fields are critical, no longer are the only mission fields in places like Nigeria, Venezuela, and China, but the best and brightest Nigerian, Venezuelan, and Chinese students are increasingly finding themselves in places like Champaign, Illinois, College Station, Texas, and Tempe, Arizona.

This should challenge us to a new way of thinking.

There are many obvious strategic, financial, and logistical advantages in terms of cultivating such mission outreach here at home. Our campus ministries can clearly also serve as strategic mission outposts in our own nation, even as many already are.3 This does not mean the alteration of our current campus ministries, but recognizing the incredible opportunities that God has given us to expand them, and perhaps significantly so.

In his Admonition to Prayer against the Turks, Luther demonstrates how God can utilize the catechetical instruction of our young adults toward missionary witness:

making the tragic mistake of diverting resources from our campus ministries and outreach posts right at the time that the opportunities on campus could not be greater.

Instead, let us become even more intentional and aggressive in our efforts to equip our young people and those who work with them on our nation’s campuses. Full-time international student domestic missionaries should also be considered in key locations.

There are ultimately many reasons to CARE about campus ministry today, but I believe they can be summarized as follows: Catechizing and caring for our own Apologetics in the academic square Reaching out to those who are lost Engaging a dying culture with Christ

This is no time for timidity, and I, for one, believe our young people are ready for this challenge. In a culture marked by pluralism, we confess that Jesus Christ alone is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). In an age of relativity, we gladly confess the reliability of our Lord’s words, and the truth and certainty of his promises. And in an age of higher We need to step up And finally, I strongly urge that the educational migration, we have been our catechesis of our children be taught the catechism. given an open door to cast the net of youth as they head off the gospel not only off, but also on, our Should they be taken captive in to college. the invasion, they will at least very shores. take something of the Christian The challenges are certainly great faith with them. Who knows what God might be on campus today, but the opportunities are equally able to accomplish through them. Joseph as a sevplentiful. The continued exposure to faithful Lutheran enteen-year-old youth was sold into slavery into doctrine and practice on campus is not only essential for Egypt, but he had God’s Word and knew what he our own youth, but also in order to reach out to those 4 believed. And he converted all of Egypt. who are atheists and agnostics, as well as internationals.

Our campus ministries also serve as a great place to help Hopefully our young people won’t be sold into slav- groom “our” best and brightest students who might desire ery or carried off in an invasion as Joseph was in Genesis to be pastors, deaconesses, geo or career missionaries, 37:12ff, but clearly we, and they, have plenteous oppor- and who will continue the cause of campus ministry and tunities to confess the faith in the midst of this unique mission outreach elsewhere in, with, and through their invasion, if you will, of international students that our various vocations. gracious God is simply bringing to us from all over Let us dare to not forsake, but greatly expand, our the world. work in our nation’s incubators of ideas for the sake of We need to step up our catechesis of our youth as they the gospel, where our young people may be equipped head off to college, not only so that their faith is not stolen, in the academic square to live as faithful confessors of but also so that they might boldly confess their faith to the Jesus Christ and His Word, and where God has opened world that awaits them there. We also must refrain from incredible doors to what is quickly becoming perhaps our greatest domestic mission field.

3 Many thanks to all those associated with International Student Ministry over these many years. Learn more about their important work at www.isminc.org.

4

LW 43:239.

The Rev. Marcus T. Zill serves as the LCMS director of Campus Ministry and LCMS U.

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Christian Vocation and the Mission of God: A Missing Link?

What is the mission of God?

Andrew Pfeiffer

E

lwood and Jake Blues, played by Dan Aykroyd undergird the fact that mission is an activity of God, his and John Belushi, are trying to get their band back ongoing salvific activity in history.1 Mission takes place together in the classic movie “The Blues Brothers.” through the church and with all the pastors and people As they visit the old members of the band and encounter of the church being involved. Nevertheless, it is God’s a few obstacles, they fall back on one mission. In the narrow sense of conthing: “Does it help for you to know version, mission takes place through we are on a mission from God?” the Spirit‐filled ministry of the means All the people of The term “mission of God” can be of grace in the life of the church.

God are called to make used rather loosely. It is certainly Therefore, on the basis of God’s use of the means of understood in many different ways. word we now want to give a further grace in the church, This paper aims to bring “mission account of how the human being is of God” and “Christian vocation” converted to God; how and through to support the work of into conversation. The intention is to which means (namely through the their congregation and enrich our understanding of mission oral word and the holy sacraments) the wider church, and in such a way that mission is restored the Holy Spirit desires to be active to live the faith where as a joy and a privilege for Christians, in us and give and effect true repenGod has placed them. and that we might have a good tance, faith, and the new spiritual conscience about our involvement in power and capability to do good the mission of God. works in our hearts; and how we The concept of the mission of God (missio dei) has should respond to such means and use them (FC SD 2, 48 spawned significant missiological reflection, espe- [Kolb-Wengert, 553]). This basic groundwork of biblical cially following the International Missionary Council at and theological study assists the church to see the central Willingen, Germany, in 1952. This was closely followed function of the means of grace in the mission of God. by the work of George Vicedom, translated into English There is, however, further biblical study that is necesand published in 1957 as The Mission of God. In recent sary to expand the picture of mission. In God’s mission, decades there has been renewed understanding of the pastors and all the people of God have special callings.2 theology and practice of Christian vocation. This has Pastors are called and ordained to preach the gospel, to assisted Christians to think about the way God is at work forgive sin, to administer the sacraments, and to weigh in their daily life, and to become aware of the temptation and judge the truth of teaching, and in that sense they are of a new type of false monasticism, in which Christians retreat from the world rather than love and serve and give 1 For example, texts to study would include Matt 28:18–20; Luke 24:46– witness in the world.

50; John 17:20–23; Acts 2:14–39; Rom 1:16–17; 10:11–15; Eph 2:4–5.

What is the Mission of God? There are many different ways to answer that question.

Initially, a comprehensive study of biblical texts will

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2

A good place to begin study of this topic is the paper, “The ministry of the people of God and the public ministry,” Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations, Lutheran Church of Australia, accessed November 27, 2016, https://lca.box.net/shared/static/ ebem50bgk3kkrddjt6er.pdf.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

the front‐line in the mission of the church (AC XXVIII, 6, church, ministry, and the Christian life (or the new obe7, 21 [Kolb-Wengert, 92, 94]).3 dience), is essential for understanding the mission of All the people of God are called to make use of the God from a Lutheran perspective.6 The Confessions also means of grace in the church, to support the work of their incorporate an understanding of Christian living that congregation and the wider church, and to live the faith recognizes the significance of one’s station in life and the where God has placed them. This means taking up the associated callings, as critical to understanding Christian calling to be “in the world but not of the world,” to bring discipleship (AC XXVII, 49 [Kolb-Wengert, 88] and AC the needs of the world to God in prayer, and to be ready XXVI, 10, 11 [Kolb-Wengert, 76]). We turn to this in to witness to their Christian hope in word and deed. In more detail later. that sense, the life of the faithful in the world is a critiThird, to understand what mission is, the Lutheran cal component of the mission of God. It bears witness to Church of Australia has produced its own mission statethe grace of God, to Christian confidence and hope, and ments that guide its thinking.7 The 2001 statement has an to the truth that God does not call His people out of the opening set of affirmations that still serve as a very helpworld in order to be His witnesses, but into the world, ful basis for studying the mission of God. The grounding right into it, where He has placed them, to serve in love of mission in God’s saving activity to the lost through the and charity and prayer, and to be ready to give the reason means of grace is well summarized. The statement then for their hope when asked.4 begins to explore the role of the laity Second, there is much to be learned in the mission of God in their daily Vocation contains lives. Without using the term “vocafrom exploring the contribution of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions in undertion” per se, the statement speaks great mission standing the mission of God. This is a of the fact that Christian witness potential, for it growing area of missiological studies as a involves the whole Christian life: demonstrates how new generation of theologians discover that Christians witness not only by Christians may the Confessions move beyond an apparent their words but also by their lives contribute in the minimal contribution to mission thinking, of faith active in love for their feland understand that for Lutherans, mission civil sphere toward low human beings. Reunited with is grounded in an understanding of the justhe promulgation of God through Christ, Christians tifying work of God through the means of are empowered by the Holy Spirthe gospel. grace in the life of the church.5 So, studying it to lead a new kind of life (Rom the articles of faith that we might vari12:1–3). Christians love other ously refer to as God, sin, free will, justification, baptism, people because God has first loved them and all humankind (John 3:16; 1 John 4:19–21. This love for others is expressed in care and concern for the welfare of other people as spiritual, physical and emotional beings (Matt 25:35, 36).8

3

See also Tr 60, 61 (Kolb-Wengert, 340). There are many biblical texts to study with respect to what we call the office of the holy ministry, such as John 20:19–23; Luke 10:16; Eph 4:11–14, and the entire Pastoral Epistles, for example (note also Matt 28:18–20 and 1 Cor 11:23–26).

That study has been taken up in many different places. See for example the LCA’s Theses of Agreement, Theses 6 on “The office of the ministry,” LCA Doctrinal Statements and Theological Opinions, accessed November 27, 2016, https://lca.box.net/shared/static/eu94q385nbnfae2lzs12.pdf, and the paper “The Pastoral Ministry,” Lutheran Church of Australia, accessed November 27, 2016, https://lca.box.net/shared/static/ fi7cilt1yanvbexilgpo.pdf.

4

Starting points for biblical study concerning the way in which daily Christian living is a key component in the mission of God would be Rom 12; Eph 2:10; 4:17–24; Col 1:9–14, 2:6–8; Heb 4:14–16; 10:19–25; 1 Pet 2:9–13; 3:15.

5

See for example Karl Hartenstein, “The Augsburg Confession and Its Missiological Significance,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 65, no. 1 (Jan 2001): 31–46; Ingemar Oberg, Luther and World Mission, trans. by Dean Apel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007); and Volker Stolle, The Church Comes from All Nations, trans. by Klaus Detlev Schulz (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2003).

Finally, for further exploration of missio dei there are now many in‐depth studies. David Bosch, the author of a key missiological textbook titled Transforming Mission, sees Gisbertus Voetius (1588–1676) as one of the first Protestants to develop a more comprehensive missiology 6

For an excellent recent example of this emphasis, see Klaus Detlev Schulz, Mission from the Cross: The Lutheran Theology of Mission (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009).

“A Statement on Mission,” Lutheran Church of Australia, revised edition 2001, and “Our Church in Mission,” Lutheran Church of Australia, 2003, both available at http://www.lca.org.au/mission.html.

7

8

Ibid., accessed November 27, 2016, https://lca.box.net/shared/static/ bl1eeebqjlm93rz9m6tj.pdf.

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that saw mission grounded in the “very heart of God” and aiming ultimately to bring glory to God. The immediate aim was conversio gentilium (conversion of the Gentiles), which was subordinate to the second and more distant goal, plantatio ecclesiae (the planting of the church); the supreme aim of mission, however, and the one to which the first two were subservient, was gloria et manifestatio gratiae divinae (the glory and manifestation of divine grace).9 The International Missionary Council at Willingen in 1952 defined missio dei not so much in terms of the church’s activity in obedience to a command of the Lord, but primarily as God’s activity. For the church, this meant mission was more the gift of participating in God’s gracious activity of salvation. Bosch explains the development of mission thinking at this conference:

the Triune God himself.11 And describing the mystery of God’s mission, the same author writes: God sends his Son; Father and Son send the Holy Ghost. Here God makes himself not only the one sent, but at the same time the Content of the sending, without dissolving through this Trinity of revelation the equality of essence of the divine Persons.12

In the context of a discussion about holiness, Harold Senkbeil has reflected on the vitality and centrality of the work of the Holy Spirit in the triune God’s saving work.

“All that the Father planned for our salvation from eternity was earned by the Son in history and is now continually delivered by the Spirit through his appointed One of the benefits Mission was understood as being 13 of this teaching for the means.” derived from the very nature of The Spirit calls, gathers, enlightchurch today is that it God. It was thus put in the conens, and sanctifies the church by the text of the doctrine of the Trinity, leads Christians to see gospel for its life of love in the world, not of ecclesiology or soteriology. and not as a work in isolation. It is a their lives in church, The classical doctrine on the missio Trinitarian saving work. By reflecting marriage, family, and dei as God the Father sending the on Luther’s explanations to the three the world, as all being Son, and God the Father and Son articles of the creed, we can see that critical components of sending the Spirit was expanded to the Holy Spirit calls and sanctifies include yet another “movement”: Christian living. the church through the gospel, keeps Father, Son and Holy Spirit sending the church united with Jesus Christ, the church into the world.10 living under Him and with Him in His kingdom, and Within a few years of the 1952 council, George living by faith, part of which is giving thanks and praise to Vicedom had written The Mission of God, a work in which the heavenly Father (LC XXXVIII, 64, 65 [Kolb-Wengert, 14 he explained the role of the church in participating in 436, 439, 440]). This Trinitarian approach to mission is not just an abstract theological construct. Schulz missio dei. describes how the mission is fulfilled practically as the The mission is not only obedience to a word of the pastoral office attends to its calling, and then as the people Lord, it is not only the commitment to the gathof God go about their daily vocations, playing their role in ering of the congregation; it is participation in the God’s mission. sending of the Son, in the missio dei with the inVocation contains great mission potential, for it clusive aim of establishing the lordship of Christ demonstrates how Christians may contribute in the civil over the whole redeemed creation. The missionary sphere toward the promulgation of the gospel. Vocation movement of which we are a part has its source in George Vicedom, The Mission of God (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1965), 5.

11

David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 257.

9

10

Ibid., 390.

12

Harold Senkbeil, “Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Acedia, the Pastoral Pandemic,” in You, My People, Shall Be Holy, John R. Stephenson and Thomas M. Winger, eds. (St. Catherine’s, Ontario: Concordia Theological Seminary, 2013), 264.

14

32

Ibid., 8.

13

See also LW 40:213, 214.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

broadens the scope of mission by taking into consideration that, through their everyday service, Christians contribute to the spread of the gospel. Indeed, every Christian with his or her special talents, abilities, and gifts contributes to the mission of God in his or her particular way.15 The contribution takes place in two ways. Christians bring the gospel, God’s blessing, and love to the world, and they bring the needs and concerns of the world to God in prayer.16 When exploring the Trinitarian nature of prayer, John Kleinig writes:

Martin Luther struggled in his own life with the question of living a God-pleasing life. In his early years, the road to holiness seemed to be via the pathway into monasticism. If one could only escape the distractions and temptations of the world and give oneself to a life of prayer and study of the word surrounded by spiritual support and mentoring, then surely the result would be a good conscience in serving God. The history of Luther’s struggle is well known. What is significant for this paper is the way in which that struggle led Luther to a renewed appreciation of the way in which God is at work through Christian vocation. Christians who serve their neighbor Prayer, then, is a gift of the triune God. When we faithfully in their daily life can not only have a good conpray, we engage with the three persons of the Holy science before God in knowing they are doing good and Trinity. We pray to the Father; we pray together God‐pleasing work, but even more, in knowing that they with the Son; and we pray by the power of the Holy have God’s blessing as they attend to Spirit. What we do when we pray detheir life callings, and in some ways pends entirely on what the Son gives It is impossible are working for God and with God in us in His Word and on what the Spirto think of the that calling. it does with us through our faith in In his “Confession Concerning mission of God Christ.17 Christ’s Supper” of 1528, Luther without considering We might add, when we pray from reminded the church of three baptism, teaching, within the context of faithful baptismal divinely instituted orders in life. God absolution, and living, we are involved in missio dei. That delivers His blessings to the world context, that location, puts before us the preaching repentance through these orders: “The holy needs of the world in that place, which orders and true religious institutions with a view to the become in turn a focus for prayer. On established by God are these three: forgiveness of sins. the one hand, there is a strong sending the office of priest [pastor], the estate aspect in missio dei as God does His of marriage, the civil government” salvific work in the world through the church, loving and (LW 37:364). Today we could speak of the three orders as serving the world. Yet as the church takes its place in the church, marriage, and civic society. world, living vocationally and being a praying priesthood, In addition, Luther taught the church again about the it is empowered by the Holy Spirit to pray with Christ the priesthood of all believers. Together, the people of God Lord of the church to the heavenly Father for the needs of are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the world. This dimension is part of the goal of the send- God’s special possession” (1 Pet 2:9). Christians serve ing. Mission has the dual purpose of bringing Christ to together in the priesthood by living lives of sacrificial serthe world and the world and its needs to God in prayer. vice (Rom 12), which includes bringing God to the world So let us now consider the concept of Christian voca- through word and loving service and the world and its tion in order to be able to explore further in what way needs to God in prayer. This prayer calling is lived out in Christian vocation might be an integral part of the mis- individual lives but also as Christians assemble together sion of God to the world. to receive the means of grace and to “pray for the whole people of God and all people according to their needs” Christian Vocation (LCA hymnal: 13).

Christians also love and serve specifically in the call15 Schulz, Mission, 105. ings of their daily life. This reality helps Christians not to 16 See Walter C. Huffmann, Prayer of the Faithful (Minneapolis: over‐complicate or aggrandize the idea of priestly service.

Augsburg Fortress, 1992), 30–32.

It keeps the focus on the simplicity of Christian living. It 17 John Kleinig, Grace upon Grace: Spirituality for Today (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2008), 167.

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encourages Christians to reflect on the three orders and to identify their current calling in each order — in church, in marriage and family, and in society. This is the thinking behind the last section of Luther’s Small Catechism, which according to its longer title is: “The household chart of some Bible passages for all kinds of holy orders and walks of life, through which they may be admonished, as through lessons particularly pertinent to their office and duty” (LC [Kolb-Wengert], 365). The so‐called Table of Duties moves from being seen as an imposed burden to a God‐given arena of service when we understand God calls and blesses us to live as his children where he has located us. Living a God‐pleasing life doesn’t begin with an escape from daily life but by embracing it and making the most of its opportunities for service in all of its facets.

In the order of the church a Christian’s life looks very different from the world — regularly assembling with fellow saints around the means of grace, using their gifts to serve the congregation, bearing one another’s burdens, praying for one another and encouraging all the people of God to stand firm in faith. In the orders of family and society a Christian’s life may, from the outside, look little different from any well‐intentioned civic-or family-minded person. In one sense it is similar. Both, whether unintentionally or intentionally, do God’s work in their daily vocation. Yet there is a difference, and it comes with the perspective of faith. So Luther can say, “See to it that each remain in his station and not cast it aside. This work is pure gold when it proceeds from faith.18”Yes, it’s pure gold. Faith recognizes that God is at work in daily life through the service of a Christian in family and the civic realm. This gives meaning to tasks and callings in life beyond their surface appearance and opens opportunities for prayer, witness, and spiritual vigilance.

Luther’s sermons are rich in this thinking, especially when he is contrasting God-pleasing Christian living with any type of Christian discipleship that we are tempted to invent for ourselves. For example, in a sermon on the gospel for St. John’s day he says: There are many people who do everything except what is commanded them. Many hear that certain saints made pilgrimages, for which they are praised. So the fool starts off, leaves his wife and children sitting, who are entrusted to him by God, and runs to St James, or here or there, and does not See Joel R. Basely, trans., Festival Sermons of Martin Luther: The Church Postils (Dearborn: Mark V Publications), 166.

18

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recognize that his calling and command are much different from that of the saint he is following. The way of God . . . does not tolerate self‐sought or self‐ chosen works. Then you may reply: “But if I am not called, what shall I do then?” Answer: How is it possible that you are not called? You will always be in some state; you are a husband, a wife, or a son or a daughter, or a servant or a maid. Take the lowest estate for yourself. (LW 75:355) He then goes into specific exhortation on various estates, including that of secular rulers and the bishops of the church, and reminds the congregation of one of the devil’s focal points of spiritual attack, namely, to bring one to “the point of forgetting and abandoning his calling” (LW 75:354). Thank God it is never too late to walk again in one’s callings in faith, forgiven in full for past failures on account of the sacrificial death of Christ, and encouraged by the fact that vocational living has God’s blessing.

One of the benefits of this teaching for the church today is that it leads Christians to see their lives in church, marriage, family, and the world, as all being critical components of Christian living. The realm of the congregation is primarily for the Christian a receptive realm.

In this sense participating in missio dei is as much about receiving as doing. Yes, there are opportunities for service and love and prayer in many forms, but the congregation is primarily a realm of God’s activity through the means of grace. It is where God liberally gives and offers His gifts for the forgiveness, life, and salvation of many.

While marriage, family, and society are also realms of God’s activity, that activity takes place primarily through Christian service and witness.

The vocation of the laity is not to seek some sort of affirmation by imitating the clergy — this is actually a veiled form of clericalism. You are good for something in this church as you do what pastors ordinarily do! So it is thought that the laypeople are elevated, given a higher status if they have a role in liturgical leadership. On the contrary, there is God-assigned dignity in living within the ordinary places of human life.19 A vacuum in the church regarding the teaching and understanding of Christian vocation has become a seed bed for a potential new monasticism which has sometimes 19

John Pless, “The Catechism as Handbook for the Vocation of Laity in Worship and Prayer,” in The Pieper Lectures: The Lutheran Doctrine of Vocation, vol 11, John H. Maxfield, ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Historical Institute and The Luther Academy, 2008), 94.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

seen Christians so involved in self‐chosen spiritual activities, or even in aspects of congregational life, to the point that they no longer have time or energy for their vocation in their marriages, family, workplace, or community.

One of the temptations for Christians is to seek arenas of service that they have not actually been called to, and in the process to abandon arenas of service they have been called to, and in which they receive God’s blessing, and which is central to God’s mission (AC XXVI, 8-11 [KolbWengert, 76] and AC XXVII, 49 [Kolb-Wengert, 88].

The church has a treasure in the teaching of vocation that has, at times, been hidden, and that has impacted the mission of God. As Christians start to discover again their calling in daily life, the church needs to walk alongside them. Christian living in station and vocation is not easy.

In fact, it is often quite difficult to take up the cause of being God’s servants in family, workplace, and civic life.

Sometimes it involves bearing the cross in one’s vocation and it certainly involves spiritual struggle.20 Christians need teaching and sermons and pastoral care that encourage them to seek God’s help to remain faithful in their callings. President Matthew Harrison has this in mind when he says: It takes courage for a man to be faithful in his calling to the office of father. Fathers must balance the pressures of the workplace with the need to be present for their children. A father’s calling into the office of fatherhood is a call to sacrifice for his wife and family, even as Christ made a willing sacrifice of Himself for the children of his heavenly Father.

And it doesn’t take long for a new father to realize that his call to sacrifice increases tenfold upon the birth of his child. 21

teaching, absolution, and preaching repentance with a view to the forgiveness of sins.

At the same time, when Paul teaches the faithful about Christian living and their role in the mission of God, he does not say that all Christians are to baptize, teach, preach, or preside at the Lord’s table. It is understood that there is an office of preaching whose task it is to attend to the public ministry of the means of grace, the means of the Holy Spirit.

Paul teaches Christians to lead a life sanctified by the word in accord with the faith they have received, a Spirit‐ filled and Spirit‐led life of service and hospitality worthy of the Lord, a life lived in the world but different enough from the world to invite scrutiny and inquiry.22 So what is the difference? As we have noted above, in one sense Christian living might not be all that different from any other well‐intentioned citizenship. Luther spoke of people being masks of God in the sense that they do the work of God, intentionally or unintentionally.23 For example, parents who feed their children, care for them, and keep them safe are doing God’s work — not only Christian parents, but all caring parents. Farmers who look after the land and sow seed do God’s work of feeding people — not only Christian farmers, but all farmers of integrity.

For Christians, however, there is an additional dimension to their vocational living. By faith, they now see their callings in life as callings from God. They are aware that what they are doing in marriage, family, work, and society is God’s work, and it is done on God’s behalf. They take up their callings as part of a response of faith, and in that sense they work with God in their station and vocation.

John Kleinig has captured this when he writes: The practice of Christian spirituality rests on the teaching that everything that has been created by God can be made holy by the Word of God and by prayer. This applies to all areas of our life because the goal of our piety is the sanctification of our whole journey through life. Thus, just as every meal is sanctified by saying grace, so everything that we are and have and do is sanctified by the use of God’s Word and prayer in our daily devotions. Every home and every marriage, every gift

Having explored missio dei and Christian vocation separately, it is time to reflect on them together.

Missio Dei and Christian Vocation The missio dei requires, if it is to find full expression in the church and the world, the reality of Christian vocation.

Mission sermons based on texts such as Matt 28:16–20; Luke 24:46–50; or John 20:21–23 proclaim the Lord’s mission vision and mission means. It is impossible to think of the mission of God without considering baptism, Gene Veith, The Spirituality of the Cross (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2010), 111–14.

20

Matthew Harrison, Christ Have Mercy: How to Put Your Faith into Action, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2008), 235.

21

22

See for example Eph 2:10; 4:17–24; Col 1:9–14; 2:6–8; see also 1 Pet 2:9–13; 3:15. This has been explored in my paper, “A Comparative Study of Ephesians, Colossians and First Peter: Implications for the Evangelisation of Adults,” Lutheran Theological Journal 34, no. 2 (Aug 2000): 61–72.

23

Veith, Spirituality, 89–116.

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and every possession, every day and every night, all our work and all our sleep, all our joys and all our sorrows; everything is made holy by God as we use His Word to guide us in our prayers. But most significantly, we are kept holy by listening to His Word and by praying as guided by it. The Word that sanctifies us sanctifies our meditating and our praying so that we can serve God the Father as His priests in our station and vocation.24 The Christian life is a holy life sanctified by word and prayer, lived in the daily callings of marriage, family, workplace, and community (Eph 5:15–6:20; Col 3:1–4:6).

As Christians move from the liturgical assembly with the blessing of God for their week of service, they go as the baptized and the fed, they go as people of word and prayer, the holy ones going to their God-given callings. In 1 Peter 3:15, Christians hear that one aspect of their holy living will be that people ask them to give the reason for their hope, and so they need to be ready to give the reason. The word “reason” is perhaps a little weak for modern ears.

The word is apologia, and so a better translation could be to be ready to give a defense, or an account, of the gospel.

This means that Christians need to know the Christian faith and be prepared to engage with the questions of those who ask.

It may be that it is rare for people to ask straight out why someone is a Christian, but people are asking spiritual questions all the time: Why does God allow bad things to happen? Will you pray for me? Being religious is about living a good life, isn’t it? I can be a good Christian without going to church, can’t I? Does Christianity really help you? Sometimes they come out as assumed statements of fact, but if we listen, often they are also questions. Be ready to give a reason for the hope you have. But do it with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, St. Peter writes (1 Pet 3:15). Gentleness and respect are fruits of the Spirit, and they have to do with care for the person who has asked. Conscience has to do with standing before God and challenges Christians to check their motives and intentions when giving a defense of the gospel.

One of the differences in living mentioned earlier is that, when we do speak, we are called to speak in a gracious way, inviting people to further conversation and the exploration of additional questions (Col 4:5–6). This 24

Kleinig, Grace, 279.

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conversation and prayer, emerging from simply living and loving and serving in the regular context of daily life, is vital in the mission of God. The question for this paper is what does it mean for the mission of God when the church encourages and teaches the faithful to see that part of their involvement in missio dei is the call to live out their faith in marriage, family, workplace and community? Through that vocational living, that service, God is at work blessing His world, and opening up new conversations that lead to inquiry and prayer. Mission is not some kind of alternative theological orientation. For example, mission is not either “moving out or inviting in,” but both. The church is not either “mission or maintenance,” but both. Worship is not either “liturgical or missional,” but both. Similarly, the mission of God is not either about baptism, preaching and the Lord’s Supper, or about Christian vocation. The two live together hand in hand in an integrated way in the mission of God. In one sense the locus of mission is the church and the teaching and sacraments of the church. All people are invited, urged, and encouraged to be baptized, be taught, receive absolution, and to receive the Lord’s Supper. And these gifts are given to, and administered through, the church. In another sense the focus of mission is the world. We are sent into the world. Christians live their lives in marriage and family, in the workplace, in the community where they are located. They serve with love and bring the needs of the world to God, both in their own devotional life, and as they gather together as the priesthood in the liturgical assembly.

Sometimes mission strategies can set targets or goals too much in the future. The same thing applies when we think of the link between Christian vocation and the mission of God. The goal is not that we live vocationally so that some people in our family or workplace or community will become Christian. We live vocationally because this is God’s call and it has God’s blessing. God will take care of His mission. He calls us to attend to our vocation.

He will open opportunities for love, hospitality, conversation, prayer, loving service, and even verbal witness for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Serving the Faithful for Vocational Living in Missio Dei This paper closes by posing a question and offering some initial solutions. When the church comes to embrace Christian vocation as an essential dimension of the mission of God, and when Christians come to see that living

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

a life of faith and service where they have been placed means involvement in the mission of God, then what do the people of God need from their church to encourage and sustain them in this aspect of their mission? I suggest eight things.25 1. Teaching the baptized for their daily Christian vocations. This means also being released from the burden that to be a good church member means to be involved in every latest congregational program. There are many excellent resources available for congregations and Christians wanting to study Christian vocation.26 2. Preaching that recognizes the struggles of vocational living and offers spiritual help. This takes note of the fact that it is often difficult to be a Christian in one’s daily vocations, but that such discipleship has God’s command and God’s blessing.

3. Teaching the baptized to pray for the world in the mission of God. This includes both the individual and the corporate components of intercessory prayer. Pray as the people of God gathered together for the needs of the world and personal and family prayer for the needs associated with one’s own sphere of life and callings.

4. Encouragement to practice hospitality. Two tables are significant in any Christian’s life: The table of the Lord from which we receive forgiveness and life, and the table of our home at which we practice hospitality by offering food, fellowship, and conversation.

5. Teaching the Christian faith to the faithful clearly and unapologetically. In a culture where we can no longer assume that Christians have been well catechized, we need to start with the basics: the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms have a place in mission education.

6. Working with the confidence that God’s word and sacraments are effective mission means. In an ecclesial culture of spiritual activism and a secular culture of reward for effort, the church needs to be confident in the work of the Spirit through the means of grace, and to teach and encourage a spirit of receptive spirituality among the faithful. The power for Christian life is the gospel and the gospel

is offered and ready to be received through God’s means of grace, both for long-time Christian and new inquirer.

7. Regular opportunities for the instruction of inquirers.

According to 1 Peter 3:15, when Christians live their faith in their daily life there is every likelihood that people will ask them to give the reason for their hope. Christians can do this, but just as they need opportunities for spiritual growth, so also the church needs to offer opportunities for believers to invite inquirers to learn about Christ by exploring the core teachings of the Christian faith at more depth.

8. Prayer for the fruit of the Spirit. St. Peter encourages Christians to give their defense of the faith with gentleness and patience (1 Pet 3:15). Sometimes the verbal Christian witness is imbued with aggression rather than gentleness, impatience rather than patience. Christians need the church to be praying for them and their witness regularly in the general prayer of the church.

Summary Sometimes Christians are confused about mission.

Perhaps they are carrying the burden of thinking that they are responsible for the salvation of their family or work colleagues (John 17:20). Perhaps they have lost confidence in God’s word and are willing to try any mission idea or program, even if they have some doubts that it is theologically credible (Rom 1:16). Perhaps they are finding it difficult to persevere (Heb 12:1‐3). Perhaps the cross is becoming unbearable (Gal 6:2).

Is a renewed understanding of Christian vocation the missing link for Christians seeking to take their place in missio dei? This paper suggests that it is worth considering. Christians who embrace their God‐given callings where God has placed them, and find the blessing of God in those arenas of Christian service, will not only find a good conscience as they respond to God’s call in their lives, but they will find their niche in missio dei, and peace and joy in their Christian service, even, and perhaps especially, when it brings the cross.

Dr. Andrew Pfeiffer is the head of the School of Pastoral Theology at Australian Lutheran College.

25

These can be read together with the five suggestions noted in my essay, “Strengthening the Congregation for Service in the Community,” Lutheran Theological Journal 46, no. 3 (December 2012): 199–207.

See especially Chad Hooper, Vocation: God Serves through Us, The Lutheran Spirituality Series (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007); and Gene Veith, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2011).

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Reaching Out to the Inner City: Opportunities and Challenges for Mission Here at Home

How is the inner city one of the Synod’s — and her congregations’ — biggest missiological challenges?

by Klaus Detlev Schultz

Personal Reflections on Inner Cities1

Fortunately, in many areas of our cities in the United have travelled around the world and seen States, revitalization is evident and there LCMS presence cities of all sizes and under all kinds of conditions. is more easily established than in the tougher areas of the I visited pastors and accompanied them in their city. But where this is not happening, inner cities bring work in the slums called favelas in Rio de Janeiro and Sao their own challenges. Of all the cities I have visited, I have Paolo, Brazil, the latter being the third largest city in the found that the United States tackles a particularly unique world, with over 17 million citizens. We have been alerted problem and that is the inner city abandonment and the to these conditions through the recent Summer Olympics struggle to keep many sections of it from decay. Other in Rio de Janeiro. I was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum people have moved in and churches that were dealing in the city of Nairobi, Kenya, housing about 250,000 with a former white commuting membership must now refocus and address the neighborhood people, predominantly in shacks. In in new innovative and resourceful ways, total there are about 2.5 million slum The United States often across cultural divides of which dwellers spread throughout the city tackles a particularly we will talk later. But there are flickers of Nairobi; that is, about 60 percent of the city’s inhabitants. Most house as unique problem and of hope and signs of concerted efforts to tenants on just 6 percent of the land. that is the inner city make a difference.

Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Basic amenities such as electricity, water, abandonment and downtown Fort Wayne has invited sewage, medical care, and clinics are the struggle to keep the neighborhood community for missing or in dire need of improvement.

Trunk or Treat and Block parties. The many sections of it And to exacerbate the conditions even most enduring outreach has been for more, many, especially the unemployed, from decay. eight years to the public Washington indulge in the cheap home brew called Elementary School with assistance to Changaa and use drugs to spend their time. Abortions are common and so is criminality, and factions take place its school children. This year, a grant from the LCMS between tribes such as the Luo and the Kikuyu. All these called “Stand with Your Community” will help fund factors do not contribute towards the quality of life for an afternoon program where the children can come to church and learn about Jesus. Fort Wayne’s inner city the people.

Then there is the opposite extreme. I was in New African ministry called St. Augustine fell into a slump York’s Times Square, downtown Chicago, Orange County, because no new African immigrants are coming to the Los Angeles, Singapore, and Tokyo, inner city experiences city and their children have assimilated into American of glitter and neon lights where the rich and the wealthy culture, so consequently, if they do attend worship, it would be at a “normal” LCMS congregation. For this frequent. reason, St. Augustine has been taken under the wings of Holy Cross Lutheran, a large church on the periphery of the struggling area. Yet, the inner city receives new 1 This is an updated and adapted version of a presentation given on June people. Asians and Latinos still move in. The historic 11, 2011, at a conference of the Philadelphia Lutheran Ministries (PLM)

I

on “Inner City Missions.”

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LCMS congregation, St. Paul’s Lutheran, is surrounded However, efforts are still being made to get or keep a foot by over 10,000 Latinos. The pulling force is that rental in the door and Bethlehem has partnered with the public housing is available. This could not happen in other cities John S. Irwin Elementary school to plant a communal around the world because there, downtown is considered garden. Yet the struggles remain real and the burden on prime property. congregations is enormous.

The urban, inner city environment brings with it some Meeting the Challenge: Inner City Ministry personal familiarity. As a family, we moved to the south side of Fort Wayne to an area that had seen its prime well For all the reasons above, we consider the inner city a over fifty years ago. Its buildings still show some of its past missiological challenge. Since people of different ethnic splendor and it is, admittedly, a far cry from the abject backgrounds and cultures have moved in, the inner city conditions of real inner city settings we customarily think is a mission field of its own special kind. Fortunately, as of. And yet here, too, conditions are not conducive for said before, many inner cities in the United States are improvement. Income from property tax is much lower gentrifying, but still not everywhere. It is true that revicompared to the suburban part of the city, and schools talization is occurring somewhat in Fort Wayne too. Zion are suffering because of it. The number of children who Evangelical Lutheran Church is an inner city congregareceive free and reduced lunch is far greater than in the tion and it has over the last decade or so managed to clean up its neighborhood by partnering with suburban districts. The need among the municipality and the neighboring students of such schools is dire. In the The woes of Jesus Roman Catholic congregation. Vacant case of Brown v. Board of Education houses were bought and torn down and were spoken over from 1952, the decision was reached the city prior to His replaced with new housing. The Allen that education may not support racial County Public library and the Urban segregation. And yet beyond that, as triumphant entry.

League moved in. The city cooperated the case of San Antonio Independent Among the many and built trails for walking and biking School District v. Rodriguez (1973) has elements that are and a new YMCA has been built, but shown, the issue remains unaddressed crime is still a challenge with a murder unique to the city as to how schools in lower income areas rate that is too high. of Jerusalem, it also with predominantly non-white children This so-called “renaissance projshould be supported. speaks for cities in ect” was spearheaded by our former South Side Fort Wayne Community general. pastor who is now the LCMS president.

School serves as an example. It still The renaissance project was a human offers an International Baccalaureate and has the reputation of having been one of the best care project in partnership with the neighborhood and schools in Fort Wayne. Now it is on probation, one reason focused on non-members. In such cases, acts of mercy being that 700 of the 1500 students have English as a offer greater latitude of interdenominational cooperation second language. People from other culture groups have without violating the LCMS’s confessional stance. Still moved to this part of town, causing a reshuffling of those membership is stagnant. It seems that some churches are who live there, and the majority of them now have to once again thankful for their location having waited out learn English. Of course, all children will have to take the the worst of times and reaping the benefits of gentrificastandardized exams and be part of the AYP (Academic tion. They withstood all the years of white urban flight to Yearly Performance). South Side is struggling and it sym- find a renewed interest of millennials who move to that very part of the city. bolizes the problems inner city schools face.

When we think of the word “city,” many associations The LCMS representation was strong once upon a come to mind. Not only should we look at cities in ethnic time here also. Close by, we have inner city Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which in the 1970s still had one of the and cultural terms, but also as rough patches dealing with LCMS’s largest schools. Now the church is a mere shadow a kind of spiritual warfare where good and evil forces are of its glorious past, and the school is non-existent because battling for their allegiance.

Our Lord Jesus Christ looked over the city of it has been closed. Redeemer Lutheran Church down the road had a school that also ceased to exist a long time ago. Jerusalem and cried:

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O Jerusalem! Oh, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” (Luke 13:34-35)

serve or individuals who are willing to minister while being in a bi-vocational position. This in turn raises the question of the latter group’s preparation for pastoral ministry. Increasingly, the argument is made that such bi-vocational ministers need onsite training and not a lengthy extraction to go the seminary. Moreover, the price of education at the seminary seems unnecessarily high. To that end, in response to an LCMS convention resolution, both seminaries have inaugurated an educational track The woes of Jesus were spoken over the city prior to called the Specific Ministry Pastor program (SMP) that His triumphant entry. Among the many elements that trains those individuals in congregations who may serve a are unique to the city of Jerusalem, it also speaks for church in a bi-vocational position and yet want the theocities in general. God sent messengers to that city, but the logical education. Once they enter the program they will response was mixed to the message of God’s salvation in be called vicars and then after 1½ years of on-line theoChrist. Does that deter God from continuing His mission logical education, they are ordained and then required to to the city? Not in the least. Christ’s entry upholds grace: study another 1½ years to become rostered pastors. This “Like a hen gathers her chicks under her is an education model that the Synod wings…” The city’s unfaithfulness is not has endorsed, and it anticipates changThe poor and the countered by God’s unfaithfulness. God ing and struggling contexts such as the needy are a central sends His own son. He enters riding on inner city where individuals are not able a donkey on His way to the cross and concern of the to remove themselves from their ministhe empty tomb — all for those who live church … the active try for traditional theological education. in the city.2 The point is that the city has We also have started a practicum at love and hope that become and should become the Synod’s Concordia Theological Seminary (CTS) accompany a true concern overall. It is our national misin Fort Wayne that requires, in addiChristian living will tion to readings and assignments, an sion field.

In Fort Wayne we have an inner city appear in the daily inner city summer vicarage sponsored church called Shepherd of the City. It through the Office of National Mission life and work of all was once a flourishing congregation.

(ONM). Currently ten students have believers.

Yet the church, then called Concordia joined the practicum with an interest Lutheran, decided to relocate to another in becoming the Synod’s first inner city church planters, area in the 1970s. It left behind a beautiful building and modelling their ministry after the Network Supported a remnant few who are struggling to keep the church Missionaries (NSM) deployed for overseas mission open. Unfortunately, in the forum of congregational through the Office of International Mission (OIM). autonomy, most other churches in the vicinity leave this But let’s go back to the inner city church in Fort church to tackle her woes by herself: a small member- Wayne, Shepherd of the City. The pastor who volunship, no money to pay a full salary for the pastor or for teered eventually left the church and once again it was left the upkeep of the building. These woes led to the tearing stranded. This time CTS picked up the situation and now down of the former school with an old bowling alley in a professor serves as its part-time pastor.3 This professor the basement (the demolition itself cost $60,000). For a has also been assigned a vicar, but this vicar needs to be short time, an older pastor volunteered to serve the parish paid. Who can do that? The district had offered some and he could do so without a salary because he had inher- time ago to step in and offer half of that salary. The church ited some money. is slowly but surely recovering from multiple setbacks.

Might this portend future ministry to the city? Most likely so. Struggling inner city churches will have to find 3 On September 25, 2016, The Lutheran Foundation in partnership individuals who are either retired but are still eager to with Concordia Lutheran High School released a series of videos (2016 Charles Van Engen, Mission on the Way: Issues in Mission Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 90–91.

2

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delegate meeting videos) depicting Lutheran life in and around Fort Wayne, including a video capturing the ministry to Shepherd of the City Lutheran Church.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

The area is surrounded by poverty. With a matching grant In an essay several years ago entitled, Re-examining from the Lutheran Foundation, a kitchen will be put into Our Vision for the Poor,5 Jeff Cook recognizes that in a new outreach center, Shepherd’s Hand (the building was engaging the inner city community, social issues such a former dance hall), adjacent to the church. But to raise as injustice and poverty become an integral part of the the funds that then will be matched has been a struggle. church’s mission. It is not about the reality of poverty, One of the main purposes for that kitchen is to address since that is a given, but rather it is a question of how we prevalent obesity among those living in that area. go about helping the poor. Here are some considerations: We have here a case study that shows that there is a Our eagerness to help needs to be guided by the quesneed in the LCMS, as in other churches, to offer and share tion, how can we assess what we do in the context and its resources to address the problems of a struggling con- how does it affect the people who are on the receiving gregation coupled with flexibility in action. We all are in end? There are perhaps three levels of social need that this together as the body of Christ. We cannot leave indi- can be suggested as one addresses the community and vidual pastors fighting out inner city ministry on their its people. The initial step, undoubtedly, is through relief, own — and that includes new church planting projects but then it moves to development and, finally, to help in in the inner city. Church planting efforts have shown that making structural changes. In terms of the first step, we joint support of an individual prevents them from becom- can establish the fact that it is natural for us to respond ing modern-day Jonahs who despair in crisis first with emergency relief. As over their own isolation. In short, we Cook points out: can hear the cries of inner city missionWhether it is a local house fire that The inner city aries and church workers coming at us destroys a family home, a hurricane outreach will have from all angles, reflecting problems that that sweeps across New Orleans, or a huge worldwide are historical, contextual, relational, an earthquake that devastates Haiimpact when certain ti, the willingness of Christians to ecclesiological, and missiological.

Concerns Lead to Appropriate Action

immigrants, nonChristian people, are reached.

It is important, however, that whatever reflections we make, whatever values we construct, and whatever theology we create for the city, we must correlate or complement our thinking with action. That action plan must reach down to the level of the streets and the people of the city or community. We cannot expect that an inner city commuting church is the answer. It’s about the community and being established in it and above all recognizing the local particularities. We cannot operate with generalizations, but must pay attention to the deficiencies prevalent in the community, of which there could be many: illiteracy, visual deficit (rundown buildings), teenage pregnancies, high dropout rates, battered women, drugs, gun violence, alcoholism, and homelessness. If our concern is about community, then the church becomes directly involved in such challenges as a church in and for that community. And so a church serving its community must be open to variety in order to meet the challenges.4 4

Charles Van Engen aptly describes the situation: “The church is not a social agency — but it is of social significance in the city. The church is not city government — but is called to announce and live out the kingdom of God in all its political significance. The church is not a

give immediately and sacrificially to those in desperate need has a positive and redemptive impact for Jesus.

The Church excels in this kind of circumstance.6

However, in Cook’s opinion, such open-handed, sacrificial giving is helpful only when it is relatively shortterm. When continued too long, the very relief intended for good can foster long-term dependency and rob people of dignity as they become accustomed to being identified and treated as charity cases. It is possible to be sincere bank — but is an economic force in the city and is to seek the economic welfare of the city. The church is not a school — but is called to educate the people of the city concerning the Gospel of love, justice and social transformation. The church is not a family — but is the family of God, called to be a neighbor to all those whom God loves. The church is not a building — but needs buildings and owns buildings to carry out its ministry. The church is not exclusive, not unique — but is specially called by God to be different in the way it serves the city. The church is not an institution — but needs institutional structures to effect changes in the lives of people and society. The church is not a communitydevelopment organization — but the development of community is essential to the church’s nature” (Van Engen, Mission on the Way, 93–94).

Jeff Cook, “Re-examining Our Vision for the Poor,” Torch (Fall-Winter 2010): 6.

5 6

Ibid., 6.

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but sincerely wrong in one’s actions. It is possible to The only possible way for a local congregation to jump show the right kind of motivation and yet land up with into such services is to conduct her own assessment. To skewed results. We must evaluate the differences between that end, Cook suggests: needs that result from crisis and those that are chronic.

Churches can begin the pursuit of development Chronic challenges demand a different kind of response, ministry by determining how God has positioned Cook says.7 and equipped them by assessing their strengths and The second level of social need is development. Here limitations, finding out what the real needs of the “the church must adjust its responses to people who are community are, building relationships with peotrapped in cycles of poverty by empowering them to ple in the community, discovering other ministry change their circumstances.”8 This kind of social help can models, and evaluating what they do.10 be more involved and time consuming since we develop a The third level of inner city ministry is to seek out strucclose relationship with the people and try to help them to develop themselves. Nevertheless, this type of assistance tural change. What exactly does this mean? The fact is that is important as it may contribute towards them escaping there are environmental or systemic problems that keep the cycle of poverty. For in Cook’s estimate, “it prompts people trapped in the cycle of poverty. Developments might thus not go deep enough to overcome them to transition from perpetual injustices and obstacles. Here one may dependence to self-sufficiency. This The church will point to sin and that sin not only takes type of development might include, for hold of people but also these sinful yet offer the gospel as a example, providing education or skill powerful people act in certain structures training to enable people to conquer credible alternative their own chronic problems and preway of life to that of of society, favoring more the powerful at 9 the expense of the poor and weak. This serve their dignity.” the culture. has already happened among the Jewish If that is the case, what specific minpeople of the Old Testament, and the istries help at the level of development?

The list is long, yet not exhaustive, with the following prophets Isaiah (Isa 5: Vineyard song) and Amos (Amos 5) addressed it. Isaiah 5:23 reads, “Woe to those who acquit the forms of assistance: guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.”

- Parenting classes And the prophet in Amos 5:12 says, “For I know how - Student mentorship programs many are your offenses and how great your sins. You - After-school tutoring - Adult education (in the LCMS that includes pastoral oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the ministry) poor of justice in the courts.”

- Computer skills training It could very well be that certain structures are in place, - Job interview coaching but unless they change, improvement might elude many - English as a Second Language (ESL) training of the people living there. Cook identifies inadequate - High school completion classes structures such as “poor educational systems, predatory - Basic finance management training lending (where cash advance businesses charge exorbitant - Home ownership classes interest rates on loans), injustice in zoning laws, and disin- Entrepreneurial development vestment in communities by financial institutions.” These - Job transportation are all problems, he says, faced by urban poor, “which - Substance abuse and family counseling collectively become monumental hurdles to overcome.”11 - Emergency shelter Thus, in such a situation where structural changes are - Drug referral services needed, the local congregation might have to partner with - Clothing outreach and feeding ministry organizations “that are experienced in engaging systemic - Prison ministry issues in the society, thereby blending their presence and influence with others to confront unjust power.”12 - Obesity awareness 7

Ibid.

8

Ibid.

9

Ibid.

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10

Ibid., 6–7.

11

Ibid., 7.

12

Ibid.

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

From Unintentional to Intentional Service We read in James 2:1–9 that the apostle James points out that caring for the poor — helping the widows and the orphans — is an expression of true faith, active through loving works that reflects God’s own impartiality. The question here is whether inner city work can be left to the mere good will and voluntary intentions of a few members of the church or whether it should become a deliberate and intentional service on the part of the church at large (i.e., the Synod)? We can provide some arguments that point to the latter. In other words, there are indicators that speak in favor of a corporate concern for the synod’s involvement: We are aware of Luther’s strong emphasis on “brotherly love” and biblically the demonstration of love for the neighbor is underscored in Galatians 6:5 where we are to have a “faith active through love.”13 In his famous preface to the epistle of St. Paul to Romans, Luther circumscribes this faith: O it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith.

It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done them, and is constantly doing them…

For through faith a man becomes free from sin and comes to take pleasure in God’s commandments.14

in missions is always a sign of an individualistically reduced and thereby disfigured faith.17 In Matt 25:31-46 we are also alerted to the fact that helping the neighbor in need is a reflection of our faith.

When the Son of Man comes, he will say: Come blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. (Matt 25:34-36) But it cautions us not to harbor any meritorious interest in serving the poor and hurting, and the Lord alone recognizes the faith behind what is being done: Lord when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and gave thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee? (Matt 25:37-39) Luther provides us with the christological underpinning of such a concern for one’s neighbor: I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbor, just as Christ offered himself to me; I will do nothing in this life except what I see is necessary, profitable, and salutary to my neighbor, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ … Behold, from faith thus flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss. For a man does not serve that he may put men under obligations. He does not distinguish between friends and enemies or anticipate their thankfulness or unthankfulness, but he most freely and most willingly spends himself and all that he has, whether he wastes all on the thankless or whether he gains a reward.18

Melanchthon, too, sees this sanctified faith as always active, “not an idle thought,” but “a new light, life, and force in the heart as to renew our heart, mind and spirit, makes new men of us and new creatures” and “as long as it is present, produces good fruits”(Ap IV, 64 [KolbWengert, 131]).15 Since this faith is living (fides viva), “active” (Ap IV, 248 [Kolb-Wengert, 158]), and “firm,” witness and confession are never far from it (Ap IV, 384 [Tappert, 165]).16 Paul Althaus thus concludes: I cannot believe in redemption only for myself. I receive divine love as “the man,” as “Adam” who is part of all others. If I do not believe in salvation for all, then I won’t believe for myself either … Laxity

Klaus Detlev Schulz, Mission from the Cross (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2009), 257.

13 14

It seems that our existence as humans can and is only one of co-humanity. We exist in relationships and these relationships matter in terms of showing concern for his

“Preface to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,” LW 35:370–71.

15

Paul Althaus, “Um die Reinheit der Mission,“ Mission und Theologie (Göttingen: Heinz Reise, 1953), 51.

The Solid Declaration IV, 12 (Kolb-Wengert, 576) compares the inextricable connection of faith and works as to heat and light.

17

16

18

“No faith is firm that does not show itself in confession.”

LW 31:367.

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or her welfare, both spiritually and bodily. To deny oneself of these relationships is to fall outside of one’s true humanity in Jesus Christ. Sin, as Luther would say, leads to a life of incurvature that denies itself selfishly of human relationships, and above all with God:19 If God should not test us by tribulation, it would be impossible for any man to be saved. The reason is that our nature has been so deeply curved in upon itself (tam profunda est in seipsam incurva) because of the viciousness of original sin that it not only turns the finest gifts of God in upon itself and enjoys them (as is evident in the case of legalists and hypocrites), indeed, it even uses God Himself to achieve these aims, but it also seems to be ignorant of this very fact, that in acting so iniquitously, so perversely, and in such a depraved way, it is even seeking God for its own sake.20 By contrast, in one of our Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) documents dated February 1999, we read of a service in faith that is ready and without pretense: The focus here is how those who are truly right with God by grace through faith serve others without any further thought of how it may serve them. So it is that one of the church’s post communion prayers asks that God would strengthen us “in faith toward you and in fervent love toward one another.”21 The poor and the needy are a central concern of the church, and we would agree that the active love and hope that accompany a true Christian living will appear in the daily life and work of all believers and is impressed on them in worship through corporate prayers. In this way “Lutherans are well taught by their tradition to recognize that this is the primary way the church reaches out with the love of God for a suffering world.”22 To express such love all Christians are placed in the context of their family and neighbor and in occupational situations. According to the CTCR statement, some speak of this crucial daily work of believers in their various callings as “indirect and unintentional influence” and

“indirect and intentional influence” that the church might have on society through the daily work of individual Christians. We could say that when the church is engaged in its central task of proclaiming the gospel and administering the sacraments, faith is engendered in the members and love follows — often without explicit instruction. In many cases the spontaneous — indirect and unintended — result is active love in the daily life of the believers.

Thus, [T]he terms “indirect and unintended” indicate that love flows from faith in the Gospel apart from any specific or organized plan or “intention” on the church’s part, while at the same time suggesting that the church serves society “indirectly” by helping individuals who are in need.23 However, the church also proclaims and encourages in its sermons intentionally about this indirect care and concern for others. Therefore we may call it still indirect, yet intentional in influence and focus, just as the preacher becomes explicit in reminding his members that good works are necessary in their everyday lives and that God’s law in its third use provides a helpful reminder.24 However, can we go beyond this realm of vocational service and ask the question of whether the church should also engage in a communal, intentional, and direct way of addressing its love? We have examples of such communal concerns in Acts 6:1–7 where the apostles select deacons to relieve them from the task of helping the Hellenist widows so that they could devote themselves to their main task of preaching. The point is that the church can become a social organization to help those in need. In 2 Corinthians 8 we see that there was not just a readiness but an actual display of such love among the churches of Macedonia.

Some may posit that the church should do so communally by addressing foremost the needs of its members.

But would there also be communal obligation to those outside of the church? Some would argue that this should be done only rarely and left under ordinary circumstance 23

Ibid., 15.

24

Matt Jenson, Gravity of Sin: Augustine, Luther, and Barth on homo incurvatus in se (New York: T&T Clark, 2006), 2–4.

19 20

LW 25:291

21

CTCR, “Faith Active in Love: Human Care and the Church’s Life,” (February 1999): 18.

22

Ibid.

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Ap IV, 189 (Kolb-Wengert, 150): “Good works are to be done because God requires them; … ought to follow faith as thanksgiving … and is shown to others, in order that others may be invited to godliness by our confession;” FC Ep IV, 18 (Kolb-Wengert, 499): “It is necessary to exhort people to Christian discipline and good works, and to remind them how necessary it is that they exercise themselves in good works as an evidence of their faith and their gratitude toward God, as it is to warn against mingling good works in the article of justification.”

Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

to the vocational, unintentional deeds of individual believers. Thus, as often as emergencies occur, such as Hurricane Katrina or earthquakes, the church corporately steps to the plate. In such cases where the church steps corporately into places of need, it competes with many other secular, private, or public agencies. But in contrast, churches take man for who he is, holistically providing both food for his soul and his body and her mercy extended underscores the gospel and love of Christ.25 There is of course the theological and ecclesiological argument that the synod as such assumes corporately the task of missions given the fact that the Lord’s mandate to do so is given to the church after the death of the apostles.

The consequence and implications of that is reflected by the founding father of the synod himself, C. F. W. Walther:

is no single way of describing the tasks leading towards the goal, especially the human care side that would assist the proclamatory and sacramental character of our mission. The CTCR from February 1999 seeks to differentiate the tasks of mercy depending on the particular, local challenges:

As certain as the church is first gathered outwardly by baptism, thus swearing allegiance to the banner of Christ, and placing herself in his service — as certain as the church has the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the priesthood for the whole world — as certain as she is the spiritual mother of all believers, the leaven of the world and God’s wheat seed — as certain, finally, as the church is a fellowship of love whose true members have ever born the responsibility for the conversion of the lost world, so certain it is that the Christian church itself is the true mission society, instituted by God Himself.26

1. A parish nurse program that keeps tabs on the members’ health care needs.

On behalf of its congregations, the Synod takes on the missionary task corporately for the conversion of the lost world. Though that task has customarily been thought of as international, there is no logical argument that it should not also oblige the church to do so nationally in the lost world of our inner cities. At this point, of course, it would require a reappraisal and restructuring of the current mission paradigm where short-term volunteers of local congregations prefer to engage in overseas projects rather than the mission field here at home. Adjustments made here would bode well for the situation in the United States.

While the overall goal for mission to the city is in Walther’s words “the conversion of the lost world,” there 25

Though much is said about helping those in need, Robert Lupton, in his book Toxic Charity, does not promote evangelistic activity or any connection of such work to the church. Robert Lupton, Toxic Charity (New York: Harper Collins, 2011).

There is no single way in which the church must organize to assist its members in showing human care. Accordingly, there is no prescribed manner in which the church must organize today. The structures employed for the work of human care thus differ from the office of the pastoral ministry …27 Examples of such work differentiated from the pastoral work can be manifold:

2. A day care center program for preschool children.

3. A food pantry for people unable to secure their own or family meals or that have only limited resources to do so.

4. A low-income housing project.

5. Serving God at the (local) homeless shelter.

6. Allocating the congregational budget for LCMS mercy work.

And yet, all the above tasks have in common that the faith of the church becomes active in love, extending the love of Christ to others outside of the word and sacrament worshipping community.

The Florescence of the Church The Synod’s obligation to address the inner city situation comes from its own logo. It represents the classical acts of diakonia, (leitourgia), martyria and koinonia, which to me suggests a corporate commitment to these activities as they take root at the local level through or near a congregation. Thus, the Synod together with all its congregations wants a congregation to become 1. An active service of mercy to others — diakonia.

2. A worshipping sanctuary that offers word and sacrament as God’s life-giving word — leitourgia. People gather to sing and pray and break God’s bread as once the first congregation in Jerusalem did (Acts 2:40–42).

26

C.F.W. Walther, “The Mission society established by God,” Mission sermon on Isaiah 43:21, in The Word of His Grace: Occasional and Festival Sermons (Lake Mills: Graphic Publishing, 1978), 23.

27

Ibid., 28.

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3. A fellowship that cares for one another and carries each other’s burdens (Gal 6:10) — koinonia.

4. A congregation that is evangelistic — martyria — and carries the life-changing message to this world.

These four classical activities do not tell everything of a church, but they do highlight her existence in view of our co-humanity and how she can shape it in her life.28 Today, martyria in particular needs an intentional focus and a fine tuning at that. In the words of Lesslie Newbigin, a former missionary and bishop to India, martyria would have to seek an intentional missionary encounter with the prevailing culture and nothing less.

That missionary encounter embraces three fundamental convictions: First, the church’s beliefs are shared with the cultural community, challenging the reigning idolatrous assumptions of the world. Hermeneutically, the prevalent culture must be understood and encountered in light of the Bible rather than allowing the Bible to be absorbed into the formative religious assumptions of the culture.

Only in this way will our message challenge prevalent views at their roots.

Second, the church will offer the gospel as a credible alternative way of life to that of the culture. For that to happen, the church must also embody a life as God’s children. And it should be made unmistakably clear that God has come in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. It is about the gospel and the center of it is the cross. The death of Christ is a universal event, valid for all people, non-discriminatory, and non-racial. Thus, the missionary encounter, if genuine, will embrace people of all backgrounds and societal standing.

Finally, there will be a call for radical conversion, an invitation to understand and live in the world in light of the gospel. The witness of the church through word and sacrament and the witness of its members call all inhabitants of the dominant culture to conversion to the different way of life in the church that the gospel offers.

In Newbigin’s mind, the church has too often learned to coexist peacefully with the culture around it.29 In the end, the Synod’s mission is all about the gospel.

To sharpen the focus and edge on others, I recall Reporter (June 2011) once stating provocatively that it is not only about the “unchurched” but the “unsaved.”30 28

Schulz, Mission, 236–237.

29

Michael W. Cohen, “Liberating the Gospel from Its Modern Cage: An Interpretation of Lesslie Newbigin’s Gospel and Modern Culture Project,” Missionalia 30, no. 3 (2002): 360–375.

30

The Global Impact of Inner City Mission We have to take one final dimension of inner city mission into account which could almost qualify as a welcome by-product. The inner city outreach will have a huge worldwide impact when certain immigrants, non-Christian people, are reached. The author of a recent journal article entitled, “Reaching the Nations through Our Cities” envisions a global dimension with the inner city mission work in the United States. He describes the situation as follows: Most church and mission organization paradigms in America have not adjusted to the reality that the frontier of reaching unreached peoples is not necessarily geographically distant but is sometimes available through relational networks in their own homeland through influential immigrants…With the world becoming deeply urban and connected, the pioneer missionary of the twenty-first century will look much different from previous centuries.

They will focus on reaching busy, hidden, influential unreached peoples who have migrated to cities and will spread the gospel through these migrants’ networks throughout the world.31 The work among immigrant people groups in the inner city will create diaspora groups who will continue to have ties with their ethnic group back home. That then has value for missions overseas. Unfortunately, church members are largely still willing to spend billions of dollars for their own short-term trips to foreign lands, forgetting that in our inner cities potential missionaries are living right here at their doorsteps. To reach such people we need to raise our own cross-cultural missionaries. As said, these missionaries will often feel isolated from their own church or organization which seems indifferent to their work in inner cities or is critical of it because they still imagine missionaries to be engaged in overseas mission work: As a result, if laborers are going to increase among the unreached in America, structures and platforms within mission organizations and churches need to support and facilitate the work among the unreached.32 Chris Clayman, “Reaching the Nations through our cities,” Great Commission Research Journal, 6, no. 1 (Summer 2016), 6–21. Therein page 9.

31

32

Ibid., 13.

LCMS Reporter (June 2011), 2.

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Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Conclusion Most LCMS congregations and their members have an honest desire to help a hurting world, and yet Cook is correct when it comes to stepping to the plate: [I]t can become confusing and intimidating when we are challenged to make a difference in the face of such overwhelming needs. Just as a doctor first determines a patient’s problem in order to prescribe a helpful course of treatment, the Church must also learn to diagnose social needs to determine the appropriate response.33 We are certain and convinced that the spiritual needs are common for all humans equally, and yet the challenge to address those spiritual needs through an appropriate ministry and worship life for a particular context, especially the inner city, is a persistent one. To that end, may the Lord grant His church insight and fortitude, and may He guide and bless her in that service.

The Rev. Dr. Klaus Detlev Schulz is dean of Graduate Studies, director of the Ph.D. in Missiology Program, and professor of Pastoral Ministry and Missions at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind.

33

Ibid., 7.

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The Christian confused by the current landscape will find in this book trustworthy counsel

Book Review and Commentary

Has American Christianity Failed?

by Bryan Wolfmueller (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2016)

and steady, solid exposition of the word of God given in Scripture.

by Warren Graff

T

he author has provided a helpful and needed resource for an examination of current American Christianity. Do we know the right diagnostic questions to ask? Scanning the theological landscape around us — Joel Osteen and his promises of prosperity, Calvary Chapel preaching end-times, former Lutherans being “re”-baptized, solid Lutheran college students being invited to so-called non-denominational campus Bible studies, etc. — do we know how to rightly discern what is going on and what might be the dangers?

Has American Christianity Failed? helps set the compass in front of our eyes. The book intends “to awaken our theological awareness” and, in view of the problems, inconsistencies, and outright false doctrines we see around us, to “offer a beautiful alternative.” There’s a lot of land to cover, but Wolfmueller, with obvious familiarity with the terms and clichés of modern American religiosity, is able to bring the reader on a straight path through the confusion.

What are revivalism, pietism, mysticism, enthusiasm (i.e., theological enthusiasm, not the enthusiasm we all enjoy of jumping up and down at the basketball game)? A book could be written about each of these, but Wolfmueller succeeds in giving a succinct, clear understanding, and this is an understanding that will aid the Christian in diagnosing problems of doctrine

and problems in the church far past areas covered in this book. As he points out concerning the four aforementioned “isms,” “these characteristics describe the theological landscape of American Christianity. They shape the hearts and minds of America’s Christians.”

How consequential is a familiarity with these “isms”?

In an enlightening vignette, the reader gets to hear Wolfmueller interviewing a famous leader in contemporary worship. When Chris Tomlin says that “the role of the worship leader is to bring people into the presence of God,” Wolfmueller is able to then ask, “How do you know when you’ve arrived in the presence of God?” (17). Tomlin’s answer to that simple question allows the reader to see what mysticism looks like when the rubber hits the road of actual experience. In a few pages, the reader is given a clear grasp of the problems brought into the church by these “isms.” From there, it is a natural extension to hear revivalism or pietism or mysticism or enthusiasm being intermingled with Christian doctrine and to rightly diagnose what is going wrong.

But it’s not just about diagnosing what is going wrong around us. It’s also about diagnosing what is going wrong in us: “The only way the death of Jesus makes sense is if we are broken beyond repair” (58). Is our sin a tendency we need to deal with so that we can improve? Do we have a spark of good preserved in us after the fall? The question is critical. It will determine whether the preaching

It’s not just about diagnosing what is going wrong around us. It’s also about diagnosing what is going wrong in us.

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we need to hear concerns improvement and methods for making a decision for Christ, or if it must concern something quite different. The something different is, of course, the preaching of Christ crucified — Christ as pure gift.

But this brings up an often forgotten distinction concerning free will. If we are not saved by an exercise of our will (“I have made a decision for Christ”), then is there any such thing as free will?

In a concise survey of the question, Wolfmueller demonstrates the free will we do, indeed, have (i.e., in the decisions of my daily life — “Who should I marry? What color socks should I wear?”) and, on the other hand, the will of God, which is for us to look at the cross: “On the cross, the depth of your sin is matched with the height of His love. On the cross, your wickedness is revealed, and forgiven” (71).

Wolfmueller has demonstrated an impressively expansive view of the landscape of modern American Christianity and provided a valuable resource to help the reader to rightly discern the sometimes confusing, sometimes conflicting, teachings and methodologies driving much of what we see around us. But he does all this with the heart of a pastor who has not only been familiar himself with the “theological wilderness” (8), but who also, being surprised by the gospel (232), is able to rejoice in bringing the gift of the gospel, the forgiveness of sins, to hearts living in despair or fear. And to bring the gift of that gospel with the confidence that Jesus does forgive sins and in the church He is comforting the conscience and calling us to be His own.

The Christian confused by the current landscape; the young man tempted to listen in on prosperity preaching, hoping to find there some promise of success; the young woman preparing to go to college, wanting to know what to expect from the “non-denominational” Bible study groups; the parents striving to understand the allure of “contemporary worship”; the woman trying to discern God’s will for her life and wondering what “signs” she should look for from God; the husband trying to find deeper spiritual feelings; and, most importantly, the sinner wondering if God has a word of mercy and grace

for him, and where he might find that word unadulterated by false righteousness or spirituality — all of these will find in this book trustworthy counsel and steady, solid exposition of the word of God given to us in Scripture.

As a final note, the helpful appendix in the back of the book must be mentioned. Here the reader is given a concise breakdown of each of the documents in the Book of Concord — the creeds (the Apostles’, the Nicene, the Athanasian), the Augsburg Confession, The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, The Smalcald Articles, The Power and Primacy of the Pope, The Small Catechism, The Large Catechism, and The Formula of Concord. For the reader, this is a most helpful reminder — or a most helpful primer for the reader not yet familiar with the confessions of the Lutheran Church — of the documents by which the church confesses her doctrine and faith. And in a time of rampant revivalism, pietism, mysticism, and enthusiasm attacking every corner of the church, it is the creeds and confessions of the church where the Christian may find his or her footing on the solid ground of our Lord’s doctrine of salvation.

It is the creeds and confessions of the church where the Christian may find his or her footing.

The Rev. Warren Graff is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Albuquerque, N.M.

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