We are called to worship God with everything we are in Christ, serve one another in Christian love and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all people. This mission1 is a response to God's person and grace.

I am grateful that the Church of the Lutheran Brethren (CLB) convention delegates stated our mission personally, that is, in language that speaks to us individually, to our congregations and to each cluster of churches.2

We Worship God

The CLB that I am praying to see would be communions of people worshiping the Lord in all we do. What if our cultivation of the earth, faithfully and carefully, produces beautiful gardens and fields for the Lord and our neighbors to enjoy? What if our studying, diligently and honestly, testifies to God and our peers that we want to know and live in truth? What if our leading of our homes, offices and ministries, sacrificially and purposefully, demonstrates that we know and serve the God who owns all things? What if we come to worship, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, receptive to God's grace given us in God's Word through his servants, both up-front and around us?

Is there a higher calling than worshiping God? "Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."3 Scripture says that's worship.

How will we grow into this calling we affirm - a denomination that worships God in all we do and say? It will occur as congregations see themselves primarily as worshiping communities composed of forgiven sinners gathered in Christ to receive God's message. His grace elicits our gratitude and service. I pray God will give us grateful hearts and serving hands through his pardoning, restoring and commissioning grace.

We Serve Others

Second, I pray to see God working in us to serve one another in Christian love.

Scripture says love is patient, kind, always protecting, trusting, hopeful and persevering. Love is not boastful, rude, self-seeking, searching for evil, recording wrongs or proud. Love rejoices with the truth.4

In Life Together,5 Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer says listening, caring, bearing, praying and speaking are some of the ways Christians are called to love. He warns us of the deceptiveness of idealizing the relationships between believers because we are forgiven sinners, not sinless people. Having come to the truth about our condition and conduct, Bonhoeffer describes the strong bond Christians have in Christ and the ministry that is motivated by love.

I believe paying attention to people is an important ministry. Bonhoeffer says, "Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them."6

A carpenter told of an insight he received while constructing a house near San Clemente, California. A man out for a walk stopped and asked if he could look inside. The contractor recognized him and showed him around answering the visitor's questions. Soon several people were in the house because they were curious about Dr. Henry Kissinger, the US Secretary of State, whom they had been watching. As the builder and the Secretary were talking, the carpenter said he realized why Kissinger was an effective negotiator. He said that, in spite of the cameras flashing and other distractions, Kissinger never shifted his eyes or attention away from him as they talked. "He listened to me," said the carpenter, "as if I was the only person in the place."

Do you suppose Jesus listened like that to Nicodemus, the woman at the well and Simeon the Pharisee? Do you think he gave his full attention to his followers when talking with them? I think he did. I'm sure Jesus listened to them, and listens to us, on a far deeper level. He listens with his heart!

We are blessed when someone listens to us. Our international missionaries tell us how they must listen, long and carefully, to understand the culture, to show value for the people and to earn an opportunity to speak.

So must we. North Americans are lonely in spite of our exhausting schedules. Our neighbors are often indifferent, if not skeptical, toward the Church. So our listening, caring and praying are critically important in the Lord's preparing them to hear our witness of Jesus Christ.

First we must receive God's love. We can't love and serve others unless we ourselves live in his blessings. For even if we give everything to the poor, speak like angels and give our lives in ministry, but do it without love, we gain nothing, communicate nothing and die for nothing.7

We will have opportunities to speak the words of Jesus Christ to our sisters and brothers. The Lord instructs, corrects, rebukes, pardons, and encourages us through his Word. He often speaks to us through his own children telling God's message.

But Christ's love opens opportunities to speak. Peter instructed believers to be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks the reason for their hope. Peter had been asked about his hope, his assurance of eternal peace with God, many times and ways.

I envision us serving each other with a sincere love which is the love God gives.8

We Share Good News

Third, and not least, In response to God's person and grace, we... share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all people.

Our Vision Statement, also adopted by CLB Convention delegates, expands on this third phrase, saying: We see God stirring in our church a fresh passion to reach beyond our own comfort to all people among whom God places us. We embrace God's mission to bring the life changing Gospel to unreached people in Asia and Africa, and we sense God convicting us to more intentionally reach out to people who live in our midst in North America as well.

I pray we will be strengthened in this evangelism and missionary calling, an emphasis that has been repeatedly stirred within us by the Lord Jesus since the birth of our Church.

The words convicting, intentionally, reach out and beyond our comfort strike me.

We confess the Lord Jesus is convicting us. What is the godly response to being convicted? It is not to try harder and certainly not to rationalize our irresponsibility. Rather it is to confess our sin to God and to our fellow believers.9 Having received forgiveness, the godly response is to ask God for enabling grace to obey him.

I rejoice over everyone who has been given the gift of evangelism and mission. However, we must not leave the task of sharing the gospel to them alone. All of us and each of us are called to witness of Jesus Christ and his salvation granting us eternal life.10 Whatever spiritual gifts each of us have been given, bringing the gospel to the lost is our joint calling.11 It is God's passion in which he has commissioned us to participate.

Ephesians is often described as a letter about the Church. In it the Lord reveals how the human body is a metaphor for his Church. The Church is individuals united to Jesus Christ and to one another. Like our bodies, the Church is designed for every member to fill his/her role in response to Christ, her head. Christ serves and speaks to people through his body. His mission is done through unified coordinated response[s] to God's person and grace. The witness given by any member has greater impact when supported by a body of people showing kindness, righteousness, discipline, mercy, love and hope.

I pray to see God stirring us to the most important things in life.

The Apostle Paul told the Philippian believers that he loved them and prayed that their "love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God." 12

I'm writing this as the world is seeing the overwhelming suffering and death in the earthquake-devastated areas of Haiti. Bodies are stacked in the streets and being buried in mass graves. Seriously injured children and adults are waiting for medical help. Multitudes thirst for water and long for food as they search, or grieve, for missing family members. While I'm watching reports coming in from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the TV station cuts to a commercial. Suddenly I'm shown pictures of neglected dogs and cats while a voice begs me to send money to care for homeless animals in the US. The contrast is shocking and the appeal sickens me because of the vast difference in importance between the feeding of a cat and the medical needs of an injured homeless child.

While Scripture calls us to do good to all people, we must do what is best. Sharing the Word of the Lord with our neighbors and nations is of the highest importance. We must go to them in the way Jesus said - to be making disciples as we are going (through the course of our days and weeks).

One of our retired pastors told me it was common, in his ministry experience, for unsaved people to be introduced and led to Jesus Christ before they started attending worship services. He and several in his congregation were regularly sharing Jesus Christ with people in their social, employment or neighborhood relationships. Sometimes it was through one-to-one conversations; sometimes the gospel was shared in small groups.

We rejoice when people hear the Word of God and are drawn to the Lord in worship but we must also reach out, that is, bring the message of sin and grace to people any time and place God opens the door.

Lord, we pray that - because of you and your grace - you grant us to gratefully and sincerely worship you, serve others and speak the gospel to our neighbors everywhere. Amen.

Rev. Joel Egge serves as President of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren.

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(Endnotes)

1. The CLB Mission Statement was adopted by the 2007 CLB Annual Convention.
2. We confess our faith in The Apostles' Creed together but do it in the first person: "I believe..."
3. Colossians 3:17.
4. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. The next line is: "Love never fails."
5. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Life Together, Harper and Row, Publishers, c. 1954, chapter 4.
6. ibid, p. 97.
7. See 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.
8. Romans 12:9.
9. James 5:16, "Confess your faults one to each other and pray for each other, that you may be healed [made whole]."
10. I also ask those so gifted to assist and encourage those who have been given other primary gifts.
11. Question 257 of the Explanation to Luther's Small Catechism, Fergus Falls, MN, Faith and Fellowship Press, states the following regarding fulfilling the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ: "Christ's mission is to be carried out by Christians who use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given to members of the body of Christ."
12. Philippians 1:9-11. Notice also that Paul prays that their love would be informed by knowledge and insight. It is critical that our love energy is focused on God's priorities which we are given in Scripture.

 

By Joel Egge

Rev. Joel Egge serves as the President of the Church of the Lutheran Brethren.

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