The Rev. Dan McMiller was installed Aug. 14 as director of recruitment for the LCMS Office of International Mission during a service in the chapel of the Synod’s International Center in St. Louis.
McMiller — who began work in his new position in May — leads a four-member recruitment team that identifies, recruits and assists in the deployment of lay and ordained missionaries worldwide. He works with the Synod’s regional directors, current missionaries and “most importantly, our partner and emerging partner churches around the world in providing workers for the growing international harvest field,” McMiller said.
Preaching on Acts 20:26-32 at the installation, LCMS Third Vice-President Rev. Daniel Preus referenced the words of St. Paul, who “did not shrink from declaring … the whole counsel of God” and who in those Scripture verses also lays “a very serious responsibility upon the shoulders of pastors” to do likewise as they “care for the church of God.”
Preus told McMiller his new post is “a great honor” and holds “great responsibility” for “identifying and recruiting people who will be sent out to bring to the world … not just a message from God, but the whole counsel of God.
“This is what the world needs: the whole counsel of God,” Preus said, and it includes not just Law but also “the Gospel in all of its magnificence,” bearing witness to Christ’s death, Resurrection, forgiveness, salvation, everlasting life.
“To preach the whole counsel of God is to demonstrate God’s overwhelming grace” and “to say more than simply ‘Jesus loves you.’ Much more.”
“Pastor McMiller, since the day of your ordination in 1984 — 30 years ago this year — you have been committed to declaring the whole counsel of God in Chile, Peru, Panama, Wisconsin,” Preus said. He asked God to bless McMiller in his new post: “May God give to you and to those who are sent out into the mission field through your labors a love for the flock, that you may care for the church by declaring the whole counsel of God. May He keep you careful, may He keep you alert.”
McMiller formerly served as executive director of Luther Academy in St. Louis (2012-14), a position earlier held by Preus.
Other service includes Urban Cross-Cultural Missions and Mission executive with the Synod’s South Wisconsin District (2003-12); missionary in Panama (1999-2003); and pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Watertown, Wis. (1995-99). He also served as chairman of the South Wisconsin District’s Hispanic ministry.
A 1984 graduate of Bethany Lutheran Seminary, Mankato, Minn., McMiller completed the LCMS Pastoral Colloquy Program in 1995. Before joining the Synod, he served as a home missionary for the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (1984-85) and as a missionary to Peru and Chile (1985-95).
“This is an exciting time for our church body, since all of our global partners are appealing to the LCMS for help in a myriad of contexts,” McMiller told Reporter. “I have served in international mission since 1985 and never observed a more intense desire on the part of church leaders around the world to be faithful to the Scriptures as espoused by our confessions.”
The Synod’s overseas partner church bodies, he said, “are growing in the midst of persecution and opposition in many forms. Our duty is to stand alongside of them with sound confession and practice made evident in witness, mercy and life together.
“The boots on the ground in this stance are the many missionaries who are called by the [LCMS] Board for International Mission and supported by prayer and offerings from individuals and congregations across our Synod. It is an honor to invite brothers and sisters in Christ to present themselves for this service and assist them in the assessment process.”
McMiller and his wife, Lisa, have three children: Tyler, who has accepted a call to serve as an LCMS missionary to Latin America; Jenna, a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Anna, a high-school student in Manchester, Mo. The family attends St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Des Peres, Mo.
For information about missionary service, click here.
To contact McMiller, send an email to dan.mcmiller@lcms.org or call 314-996-1341.
Posted Aug. 14, 2014
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