Saving souls: Christ’s work, not ours

(LCMS/Erik M. Lunsford)

By Matthew C. Harrison

The Synod does a lot of research to know what works. For instance, Concordia Publishing House just published a fantastic new book by the Rev. Dr. Mark Kiessling, LCMS Youth Ministry director, and DCE Julianna Shults, Youth Ministry program manager. The book is Seven Practices of Healthy Youth Ministry, and it’s the culmination of extensive research, surveys and interviews designed to find out what works in youth ministry and what has the highest likelihood of retaining youth in a faithful Lutheran congregation. Go to cph.org to buy your own copy! You’ll be surprised at what we’ve found.

In other news, the Synod is embarking on a significant church-planting initiative. Here, as with Youth Ministry, we’ve spent years studying the data to know what practices (always under the Scriptures and our Lutheran Confessions) have yielded and continue to promise the best results in church planting. These are just two examples of the thoughtful, informed and long-term preparation behind the work your Synod is doing. There are many more I could offer from the LCMS Office of International Mission, Mission Advancement, Communications and the Office of Pastoral Education.

We want to be good stewards of the resources you’ve entrusted to us to do the work you’ve asked us to do. It’s a matter of trying to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” as Jesus says (Matt. 10:16). But for all our research, we must confess that nothing we do makes anyone a Christian. By God’s grace, we might clear out the junk in front of the door, but the work of saving souls is Christ’s.

In fact, more often than not, the Lord does His work of converting sinners quite in spite of us. I recently heard LCMS Eastern District President Rev. John Pingel preach about how the times he spends, hour upon hour, with a person or family who needs Christ often seem to result in nothing, while a moment with a passing acquaintance or a chance incident happens to bring a person to church.

Who of us could have imagined an LCMS church plant in Rome? Your LCMS missionary in Rome, the Rev. Tyler McMiller, reports that people are hungry for the comforting, pure Gospel preserved in the Lutheran Confessions. Read about how a handful of young men stumbled across the LCMS via the internet, one thing led to another, and now we have a confessional Lutheran church plant just a couple of miles from the seat of Roman Catholicism. Even in Rome, when people find out what they can expect to receive from our Lutheran pulpits and Lutheran altars, they seek us out.

It is like how Luther describes why we should go to confession: “If this were explained in detail and if the need that ought to move and lead us to make confession were pointed out, then one would need little urging or coercion. For everyone’s conscience would so drive and disturb him that he would be glad to do what a poor miserable beggar does when he hears that a rich gift of money or clothing is being handed out at a certain place. So as not to miss it, he would run there as fast as he can and would need no bailiff to beat and drive him on. For those who really desire to be true Christians, to be rid of their sins, and to have a cheerful conscience already possess the true hunger and thirst. They reach for the bread, just as Psalm 42:1 says of a hunted deer burning in the heat with thirst, ‘As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God.’ In other words, as a deer with anxious and trembling eagerness strains toward a fresh, flowing stream, so I yearn anxiously and tremblingly for God’s Word, Absolution, the Sacrament, and so forth” (Brief Exhortation to Confession, 23, 32–33).

No amount of research or planning can save anyone. God will save all of His elect. This is the wonderful comfort of the Doctrine of Election. If a year from now we discovered that all our supposed best practices, based on the best research and statistics, were completely wrong, it would not change the number of God’s elect by a single one. All His elect will be saved. We simply cannot mess up His good and perfect work.

“We know that out of pure grace, without any merit of our own, we have been elected in Christ to eternal life. No one can pluck us out of His hand [John 10:29]. He has not only promised this gracious election with mere words, but has also certified it with an oath and sealed it in the holy Sacraments. We can call these to mind in our most severe temptations and take comfort in them, and with them we can quench the fiery darts of the devil [Ephesians 6:16]” (FC Ep XI, 13).

God’s elect will be saved, to be sure, but God wills to save His people through His blessed Word spoken through poor miserable sinners like us, and it is our deepest privilege to participate in His mysterious work of electing — of saving — sinners. People all over the world are seeking out The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod for our clear confession of the Word of God. They want what we have. They long for the blessed Gospel of the free forgiveness of sins, without any work or merit on our part. There are more requests from sister church bodies and emerging church bodies all over the world than we can manage. We have requests for over 200 more missionaries worldwide. There is a worldwide hunger for the clarity of the Gospel. The harvest is ripe, indeed!

The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison (president@lcms.org) is president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Posted March 5, 2024