Knowing Your Role

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching Strength and Growth

Strength and Growth

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther strengthened the church by exposing its corruption and artificiality. He enunciated its structural sins. In Britain in the eighteenth century, a man named William Law enlarged the place of the church by exposing the piety of its members. And John Wesley and his colleagues lengthened the cords of the church to embrace neglected masses. The twentieth-century American church has endeavored to be all things to all people. It has produced fascinating materials, specialized in dialogues, programs, and projects; but the spiritual life of professing Christians has not always been in proper balance.

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching Growth and Decline of Christianity

Growth and Decline of Christianity

In 1900, two thirds of Christians lived in Europe and Russia; by 2000, three fifths of them will live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. While Westerners cease to be practicing Christians at a rate of seventy-six hundred per day, Africa is gaining four thousand Christians per day through conversion from other religions, and three times that many through the birth rate.

Religion in Gary, Indiana

55.7% of the people in Gary are religious:

- 23.3% are Catholic

- 5.2% are Baptist

- 3.2% are Methodist

- 3.1% are Presbyterian

- 2.6% are Lutheran

- 1.7% are Pentecostal

- 0.2% are Episcopalian - 0.2% are Church of Jesus Christ - 14.9% are another Christian faith(?) - 0.3% are Judaism - 0.1% are an eastern faith - 0.9% affilitates with Islam

Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed. Make it a Word of power and peace to convert those not yet Your own and to confirm those who have come to saving faith. May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Ephesians 4:11–13 ESV

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

There are a lot of statistics that I could cite, focusing on the current environment for LCMS National Mission as it relates to LCMS Black Ministries. After having spent five years in Gary, IN, a majority-black city which those acquainted with it saw it as either the aspirational model for Black economic, political, and social achievement, or cautionary tale for the inability of majority-black communities to fulfill those hopes.

“In March of 1972 black elected officials, civil rights activists, black integrationists, black nationalists, and Black Power apostles met for three days in Gary, Indiana, looking to end the intense four-year feud that had effectively divided black activists into two broadly defined camps: integrationists and black nationalists. While these tensions always existed within the black freedom struggle, things escalated in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968. As the titular head of the movement, King commanded the respect of Black Power advocates, although they bitterly disagreed with his integrationist approach. King’s death created a leadership void within black America, and civil rights movement veterans, along with black elected officials, fought for this space against those who called themselves black nationalists. Initially called by Amiri Baraka, but later co-opted by members of the newly formed Congressional Black Caucus, the National Black Political Convention (NBPC) would bring together approximately 8,000 people, who included 4,327 official delegates, hundreds of black elected officials, civil rights movement stalwarts, and black nationalists, as they attempted to chart a political strategy to mobilize black political power at the local, county, and state levels, as well as guide themselves through the 1972 election season. One observer noted that the crowd at Gary was evenly split between those who favored working within the system to bring about change (integrationists), and those who preferred to work outside the system, or better yet, dismantle the system (black nationalists). The Convention was an attempt to develop a national black agenda that would merge these competing ideologies under the theme “unity without uniformity.” While there was a great deal of ideological disagreement between the two philosophies, both black nationalists and black moderates did find common ground on the issue of black political power.”

Moore, Leonard N. The Defeat of Black Power. LSU Press. Kindle Edition.

Those were heady days in Gary and many other of the so-called “Chocolate Cities” as George Clinton and Parliament musically described them. Along the way, enthusiast pastors became embraced as political power-brokers and forgot their first love, being servants of the Word. It was easy for them to do, since for so long it was the only way that a black man or woman could exercise community authority and have some degree of respect from the majority white population. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. got a Nobel Peace Prize; Stokely Carmichael got an early death from cancer while living in Guinea essentially as a political exile.

The problem with this development is that by making pastors into more than theological and pastoral leaders, it drew people into the pastoral office who would have been better off in other vocations, it cheapened the Office, and it opened it to accusations of seeking after power. Even worse, it enabled congregants to abandon their proper vocations relative to the Gospel. Dr. Luther was very clear in the Smalcald Articles on this point:

The Book of Concord (Smalcald Articles, Article 4: Concerning the Gospel): - We now want to return to the gospel, which gives guidance and help against sin in more than one way, because God is extravagantly rich in his grace: first, through the spoken word, in which the forgiveness of sins is preached to the whole world (which is the proper function of the gospel); second, through baptism; third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar; fourth, through the power of the keys and also through the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters. Matthew 18[:20*]: “Where two or three are gathered …”.

As an illustration, look at Jacob in his service contract negotiation with Laban, his wives’ uncle. As compensation, Jacob claimed all the striped, speckled, and spotted sheep, leaving all of the solid sheep for Laban:

Genesis 30:37–39 ESV

Then Jacob took fresh sticks of poplar and almond and plane trees, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the sticks. He set the sticks that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the sticks and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled, and spotted.

There is a lot here, and it isn’t about magic; it’s about being led by the Lord and obeying His direction. Later, Jacob would explain to Rachel and Leah how these things turned out:

Genesis 31:10–12 ESV

In the breeding season of the flock I lifted up my eyes and saw in a dream that the goats that mated with the flock were striped, spotted, and mottled. Then the angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘Here I am!’ And he said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see, all the goats that mate with the flock are striped, spotted, and mottled, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you.

Jacob shepherded the flock, but the flock grew as it came together to be refreshed as they drank at the water. Jacob established the conditions, but the sheep made the interactions happen. Jacob placed them in a safe space as their shepherd, and they fulfilled their vocations as sheep, and the flock grew by the will of the Lord.

God has a purpose in all of this work in which He directed us to “occupy until I come.” We aren’t doing this to build up own on fan groups, social influence platforms, or cults of personality. We do this as servants of the word, serving God’s children, Christ’s Body, His flock,

Ephesians 4:14–16 ESV

so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

The World, as it stands against the Gospel, is under divine judgment, even as “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” We know, as Confessional Evangelical Lutherans that the Earth is the Lord’s and He created it for good. Sin has corrupted God’s creation, but the corruption is cleansed before God by the blood of the Lamb. What is now hidden shall be revealed, even as we shall be revealed as who we truly are in Him. To that end we labor, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord, just as His labor was not in vain before the Father.

Isaiah 53:10–11 ESV

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin has left a crimson stain, sin has left a crimson stain… He washed me… white as snow!

I owe it to Him, not to earn my salvation, nor that you should try to earn yours, but against all those who claim that we owe it to THEM, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil! we owe them nothing but the truth as it is in Christ Jesus - He is Lord of All, and they shall bow to Him and receive the wages due.

My part is just one of many, in one corner o f His Vineyard. It is the part that He has given me to tend, and until He changes my assignment, I labor with joy, knowing that it is His, even as I am His, to the praise of His glorious grace.

And the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.