Jesus First On Duty for Another Season

 By Charles S. Mueller, Sr.

Jesus First has decided to remain on duty for another season.  It does so in support of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s historic stance on Scripture and the Confessions.  It does so with commitment to an ever expanding, Gospel-centered, mission-driven, future-oriented approach to ministry. 

Here are some reasons for encouragement:

· The developing generation of younger clergy and lay leaders has a right to an unembroidered reprise of our synod’s 172 year trek.  Our history is not like the fabled wax nose that could be twisted out of shape by adding this or omitting that.  Even incomplete truth will not do.   The whole of it, please.   

· There are many faithful church members who have stood their ground during trying times.  Remember Paul’s admonition to the Galatians: “Do not grow weary in well doing.”  The price of liberty is still eternal vigilance – no matter your age.  Hang in there, you are needed.

· Every generation in time re-discovers that while Christ and His Word are constants, everything else is subject to change.  Change is not an enemy.  An automatic knee-jerk negative response to anything that’s new is. Together we must differentiate between change-that-blesses and change-that-blights.      

· Members of the LCMS are not clones.  We have always distributed ourselves across the Bell Curve, the vast majority clustered around a given issue’s Golden Mean.  Some tilt slightly to the left of center and others slightly to the right, but all are well within Biblical/historical tolerances.  Attacking that truth are our home grown noisy little bands of extremists who fire away at anyone who has a different take on things than theirs.  What ought we do with them?  Start with identifying the issue and then set about loving them back to sensibility.

· Members are different?  So are congregations.  One daunting difference between thousands of first-rate LCMS churches is size.  Some are very small; some quite large.  Neither is the optimum.  Both are best.  We all need to understand that half our 2009 members belong to the 20% of our churches that are larger while the other half joyfully worship in the 80% of our churches that are smaller.  Bottom line?  Churches that are of different size can still serve Him faithfully and effectively—if they are allowed to.     

· We all need more help with conflict management to match a lowered tolerance of conflict.  That’s not only true synodically but in our families, our marriages, our communities.   The absence of a few basic life skills (all teachable) that we don’t/can’t/won’t master guarantee conflict.

· Finally, Satan, that old evil foe is our real enemy.  He is the one that encourages us to fuss and feud with one another while making us forget that love is not only the fulfilling of the Law but the very essence of our Father.  We need to work at keeping our LCMS family close, on message and in mission.

Future issues of JESUS FIRST will expand on each of these bullets, ever mindful of the masthead’s message—and also mindful of the opinion of Dr. CFW Walther, our founding president.  In his 1847 presidential inaugural address he wondered aloud whether there would ever be e pluribus unum in the new synod that was shaping given its cultural diversity and the raw constitution it had adopted which limited the national body’s role in congregational life to “advising” through “the Word” by “convincing.”  

 “It will never work,” nay-sayers then (and even now) warned.  But it has. With an occasional wobble now and then, 172 years after its founding, the LCMS still stands—still too inclusive for some and too exclusive for others but mighty in its evangelical stance.  The bottom line is that ten generations of LCMS members and clergy have kept the family together and have made our remarkable association work.  Time will tell how the eleventh will handle its moment.