Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Advent & Christmas

The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, Jesus Christ


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about the Reformation, I promised in this final installment to feature the evangelism mailing our congregation had developed for Advent/Christmas – and in the case of this mailing, Advent definitely made a prominent showing. We did this on purpose – just as we recognized of the term “Lent” (see my post covering the development of our Lenten mailing), we realized that most folks in the upper midwest have probably at least heard the word “Advent,” and have maybe even heard it used in connection with Christmas, but probably don't really know what it is. Since our congregation takes the season of Advent as seriously as it does Lent, holding mid-week Advent services in the weeks prior to Christmas, and since most folks have already heard of Christmas (though many are confused about its true meaning), we decided to develop a mailing that would share the message of Law and Gospel by making use of the term “Advent” in a way that prominently connects it to Christmas and to as many of the other topics we shared throughout the year as possible – using and reinforcing terms and concepts from our Lenten, Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost and Reformation mailings. Thus, it begins by both telling and depicting the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah, continues by depicting the fulfillment of that prophecy with the birth of Jesus Christ, and then concludes by telling the reader of His second Advent – of His imminent Return as a victorious King and righteous Judge – and pointing the reader to his very real need for Righteous standing before God, to his very real need for Faith, in order to be prepared for that Day.

But I also promised to share some brief personal thoughts regarding the vocational needs of the evangelizing congregation and the Evangelical Church at large.

Nurturing the Fine Arts in the Church

If the Church, or the individual Christian, has any “job to do,” if there is anything which the individual Christian, or the Church, ought to become “effective” at, or strive to become excellent at, it is this one thing: communication. The Church is a herald, and Christians tell, of the Good News of Jesus Christ in the Message of Law and Gospel. The Holy Spirit works through that Message to create and strengthen Faith and to teach and remind its hearers of all that Christ taught. We communicate the Message. Period. The Holy Spirit does the rest. But we do communicate.

As was discussed at length toward the end of the 2011 Christmas Season, in my post, Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas, Part 2: Heinrich Schütz ... and other thoughts to ponder over the New Year Holiday..., true Art isn't just dazzling technical skill, it's compelling conversation or communication; and in the comments of that post I elucidate further that skilled communication, as represented in true and compelling Art, represents mastery of the highest stage of learning: the Rhetoric Stage. Thus, true Art isn't “unbridled natural creativity,” which often succeeds in communicating little more than gibberish. Moreover, developing creativity has very little to do with nurturing a child's “natural creative instincts” with a box of crayons or by providing “outlets for creative expression” – although this sort of thing may well develop some technical skill while providing enjoyment and developing interest. The fact is, almost no one has enough creativity of their own, “nurtured” or not, to produce anything compelling, on its own. On the contrary, and as also discussed in that post, true creativity is nurtured by studying the Masters, the very best that Western Civilization has produced throughout its history, by understanding their idiom in its context, and then adding to it one's own pittance of creativity as he communicates in his own context. In other words, the creativity required to to produce a widely compelling work, is not just one's own, it is mostly the creative genius of others plus one's own. In this sense, true Art isn't radical. It's conservative. That is, it is conserving something, namely, the creative genius of the past, carrying it forward through the present and into the future.

This emphasis on “conserving the past” comes up frequently on this blog. In fact, it was the major theme of the paper I delivered at the 2012 Conference of Intrepid Lutherans. That is because it is in this sense that the very character of Lutheranism is historical. As Charles Porterfield Krauth explains in his monograph, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, the Lutheran Reformation was not a radical reformation, it was conservative. His Preface helps to explain the difference:

“The history of Christianity, in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out, in hope, to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the two principles. Corresponding with Conservatism, Reformation, and Progress are three generic types of Christianity; and under these genera all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without Progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the Church. Progress without Conservatism runs into Revolution, Radicalism, and Sectarianism. Reformation is antithetical both to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to Revolution as a mode of relieving wrong. Conservatism is opposed to Radicalism both in the estimate of wrong and the mode of getting rid of it. Radicalism errs in two respects: in its precipitance it often mistakes wheat for tares, and its eradication is so hasty and violent that even when it plucks up tares it brings the wheat with them. Sober judgment and sober means characterize Conservatism. Reformation and Conservatism really involve each other. That which claims to be Reformatory, yet is not Conservative, is Sectarian; that which claims to be Conservative, and is not Reformatory, is Stagnation and Corruption. True Catholicity is Conservatism, but Protestantism is Reformatory; and these two are complementary, not antagonistic. The Church problem is to attain a Protestant Catholicity or Catholic Protestantism. This is the end and aim of Conservative Reformation.”

Thus, the Catholicity claimed by the Lutheran Confession is necessary to what it, and True Christianity, really is – it represents the outflowing of two thousand years of Christian faith and practice into the present, and projects it into the future.

But this character is not independent of the times and influences in and under which the Lutheran Reformation took place. It was the period of the Renaissance, the guiding principle of which was “ad fontes”, or “to the sources.” The Renaissance rediscovery of the past, and re-acquaintance with the Masters of previous millenia through study of their works, not only gave birth to the Reformation, but gifted the world with a veritable explosion of creativity in every area of study, and resulted in some of the finest works of art the West has yet produced. In fact, one could say that all great accomplishments in the West since the time of the Renaissance, has flowed from the principles of Renaissance Humanism, of “returning to the sources” that we may be carried forward on the shoulders of history's giants.

Not only that, and as also explained in last year's post, Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas, Part 2: Heinrich Schütz ... and other thoughts to ponder over the New Year Holiday..., the Renaissance, and the Lutheran Reformation in particular, produced the kind of education that is necessary to conserve the past in this way: called “The Great Tradition” until the time of John Dewey's “Education Revolution” early last century, which entirely overthrew the “conservative” education of The Great Tradition and replaced it with his pragmatic task-oriented theories of “Progressive Education,” it is today making a comeback under the banner of “Classical Education”. As I had also explained in that 2011 Christmas Season post:

“To be sure, there are those in the secular world who yet value this form of education: St. John’s College and Nova Classical Academy are two such examples. Among Lutherans, Classical Education is making a comeback as well: ...the Consortium for Classical and Lutheran Education has made significant progress in advocating and effecting a return to Classical Education in the LCMS [and among other Lutherans as well]. To the shame of confessional Lutherans everywhere, however, credit for the return of Classical Education to American Christianity really belongs to the Reformed, who, influenced by the leadership of groups like the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, have about a two decade head-start on Lutherans in bringing Classical Education back to Christianity. Christian Home Educators are well-known for having adopted this model of education in great numbers early on. In fact, many of the underground Home Educators of the 1970’s were Roman Catholics who wanted their children brought up with Latin and the Classics, but found that both had swiftly disappeared after Vatican II mandated that the Mass be conducted in the vernacular. Yet it remained essentially Evangelical Reformed sources which, apparently being far more attuned to and suspicious of educational movements in secular academia, developed educational resources and supplied encouragement and assistance to Classical Home Educators. The trend proceeded a little more slowly among Christian day schools, but these days the number of Christian schools adopting Classical Education is nearly proliferate... Even the subtitle of Veith & Kerns’ well-known work on the subject, Classical Education, was changed by their publisher in its recent second edition, from 'Towards the Revival of American Schooling' to 'The Movement Sweeping America' – and this is true, largely due to the efforts of the Reformed and of Home Educators.”

To engage in the kind of compelling conversation in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ naturally belongs, it behooves the Church to nurture the Fine Arts, rather than the contemporary entertainment arts (which are “compelling” only as much as they are, and only for as long as they are, entertaining, and thus are in their very nature entirely contrary to the serious Message of Law and Gospel, which confronts its hearer with the weight of eternal significance). To engage in “excellent communication” befitting the nature of the Gospel's message, the Church needs competent thinkers, it needs competent writers, it needs competent poets, it needs competent orators, it needs competent musicians and artists; and to acquire them, it must engage in the difficult task of preparing them with a competent education, one which seats students of the Liberal Arts directly at the feet of history's finest examples and conserves their excellence for our use and for the benefit of those who hear and engage our attempts to communicate with them.

What the reader of this series has seen is a very meager attempt to communicate the Message of the Gospel to the general public in just this conservative fashion, by using the language of the Church and speaking as the Church speaks. This is obvious from the words and phraseology used in the prose itself. It is equally obvious in the artwork used throughout this series, where, again, the artist made use of the familiar artistic language of the Church that it has developed over the millenia to simply represent complex theological Truths and communicate the weighty and joyous Message of the Gospel. For example, in the mailing featured in this post, we see, quite obviously, the Nativity of Christ depicted, with the Protestant use of the nimbus to designate the divinity of the Christ child, and the woman holding the Baby Jesus as His mother, Mary. This is still a familiar image. But I stated above that not only was the Nativity depicted, so was the Old Testament prophecy of the coming Messiah. Where is that depicted? Here is the specific prophecy from the Old Testament that may give the reader a clue:

“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots... And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; For the Gentiles shall seek Him, And His resting place shall be glorious.” (Is. 11:1,10 NKJV)

The dead stump, or “stem,” with a new live branch growing out of it, is a common image long-used by the Church to represent the Old Testament prophecy of the coming Messiah. This image is reinforced with the use of leaves and berries from the Holly Oak, another common Christmas symbol, used by the Church to symbolize the Passion of Christ, specifically, the crown of thorns because of its thorny leaves, and Christ's blood because of the red berries (Holly, being an evergreen, is also said to have been the tree of the Cross, but that is only legend). While some of this artistic language may be lost on the viewer – just as the meaning of the prose may be lost on the reader – this would be the case no matter the artwork or the prose. One thing is clear, however: the Church is speaking, and it is directly speaking the Good News of Jesus Christ. The reader knows this the instant he sees it, and any continued reading and viewing of this content is nothing other than his willingness to hear what the Church says about Jesus. We have every confidence that the Holy Spirit will use those aspects of the Message received by such a hearer to perform within him His work of creating and sustaining faith, and that as his faith grows, he will be compelled by love of God and His Truth to learn more – from whatever source to which the Holy Spirit may guide him.

No, the unregenerate do not need to be tricked into hearing the Gospel through community events, social groups, the allure of entertaining worship, or educational services offered by the congregation – those so-called “pre-evangelism” techniques promoted by the Church Growth Movement are just crutches to prop up a visible Church in steep decline, that has lost the art of compelling communication, that has lost the compelling art of communicating Wisdom with eloquence.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about the Reformation

The Festival of the Reformation

Celebrating that Event in History which Returned Justification
to its Central Position in the Teaching of the Church


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Pentecost, I featured the tri-fold brochure that was scheduled for delivery the week before the Feast of Pentecost. Going back to the first post in this series, Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Lent, I explained how we had decided to use

...the Seasons and Festivals of the Church Year as a pretense for initiating unsolicited communication with members of our community through mail – to tell them about the Season or Festival (it was educational) and why it was important (it was evangelical). Each mailing included not only words, but, since we had a competent artist at our disposal, custom artwork that was designed to tell the same message as the words.

There aren't any major holidays, or even a change in season, in the Church calendar between Pentecost Sunday and the beginning of Advent, so rather than wait until the beginning of Advent, we decided to chose one of the minor festivals of the Church Year that seemed to us to provide a good opportunity to share an important teaching of Scripture. The “Festival of the Reformation” was the holiday we chose, but the topic we chose to share wasn't Dr. Martin Luther. It was Justification.

In this card, not only was Justification spoken of in direct terms, not only was it delivered through the use of direct application of the Law along with direct application of the Gospel, but both Law and Gospel were represented in the image as well. In this particular case, it was thought that Message of the Law, complete with images and reminders of sin, of the Devil and his accusations, of the Righteous Judge and the Final Judgment, and of the certain prospect of Hell, would resonate quite well with what is on the minds of most folks during that time of year, anyway – the ghosts, goblins and haunted houses of Halloween. Thus, picturing and speaking so directly of eternal torment would not be as offensive as it might be at other times of the year, and, we thought, people would be more apt to hear and consider such a Message. But of course, the Message of the Law is only part of what is pictured and spoken here. The majority and focus of what is communicated is mankind's hope of salvation: the completed work of Jesus Christ on behalf of all of mankind, and His promise that through faith we have forgiveness of sins and righteous standing before God. That is, even though the Law is prominent, the focus and greater prominence is the Gospel.

What was the Process of Composing and Approving these Mailings?
One may ask, “How were these mailings composed? Did you download the content mostly from the internet, and fix it up? Who decided when it was good enough to be mailed?” Regarding composition, the answer is that all of the content – both the prose, formatting and accompanying artwork – represents the collaborative effort of individual members from the congregation. It is all original work. While Pastor could have easily written all of the content himself, he expressed desire that someone else do it under his guidance. He was concerned that his prose was a bit too terse for our purposes. So I was selected to work with him on the content. There were always improvements to make throughout the composition process, usually they were minor, sometimes they were more significant. For example, the sentence which in the card now reads

“Jesus did on behalf of man what man could not do for himself, and He promises that through faith in Him we are justified – or declared righteous by God.”

was initially written as follows:

“Jesus promises that His righteousness would be ours, and that our sins would be forgiven, if all we do is believe that promise.”

When I sent Pastor that initial version of the wording, he replied, saying, “I could understand you ...correctly especially since I know how very, very hard it is to talk about faith without making it into a good work we do to accomplish our salvation,” but, he went on to say, that reference would need to change, because it amounted to synergism. I called him on the phone, and inquired further. What he had to say was very interesting, prompting me to change my thinking. He said (and I quote from memory, consolidating his comments from a long conversation):

“Lutherans don't typically use the English term, 'believe.' It is an active verb and always imperative. When a person hears the phrase, 'You must believe,' the message is clear to him and conclusive – he thinks he must do something, and that 'doing' results in his own justification. So he immediately sets about the work of 'believing' – whatever he may think that is, like stop drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes, or start going to church every Sunday, or selling all his property to give to the poor, or quitting his job to join a ministry somewhere, or whatever he thinks 'believing' is. That kind of 'belief' is synergism. In English, we Lutherans get around this by stating it in the passive voice, 'have faith.' While it's still imperative, it isn't conclusive, and necessarily leads, not to doing something, but to asking another question: 'If I don't have this faith, but need it, how do I get it? Where does it come from?' That answer, of course, is 'You don't need to do anything to get it, it is a free gift from the Holy Spirit.' This is not synergism. It's monergism. In fact, if a person is already asking out of concern for his eternal welfare, 'How do I get this Faith?,' instead of rejecting the whole business, they've probably already received it. So in English, the word 'believe' almost immediately leads a person to rely on his own work, while 'have faith' almost immediately leads a person to focus on the Holy Spirit's work. And that's what we must be careful to always keep before us, the fact that from start to finish, our Justification is entirely God's work, from Christ's finished work on the Cross to purchase our Redemption, to the Holy Spirit's continuing work through the Means of Grace to give us the Faith through which we receive His Promises. It's all God's work. If we think at any moment it is even partially our own work, if we think believing is something we have to do, then our religion is really just a partnership with God to gain our own salvation, rather than what He does for us and in us entirely out of Grace. Such a religion is not God's religion, it is man's religion, and it does not save.”

So I thought about that, rewrote that section, and when I passed it by him again for his opinion, he simply responded, “I like it!”

Anyway, once we settled on the prose itself, an artist in our congregation was commissioned to create a piece of artwork that attempted to communicate the same message as the prose. Once this was acquired, the artwork and the prose were brought together and formatted for the medium we were using (postcards/pamphlets, etc.). Sometimes this required further alteration of the prose so that it would fit nicely around or on top of the image, which would result in renewed, usually brief, collaboration between Pastor and myself. Once this was complete, we moved to the approval stage of the process.

The entire congregation was involved in the approval process. First, obviously, Pastor approved the message that newly developed mailings contained. Then before they were mailed to anyone, they were either brought to the church Council for review and approval, or mailed to the councilmen before the meeting, so that they could review them at length beforehand. Since the congregation's name was going on a mass mailing, it was important to give the congregation's leadership the chance to object before such materials were sent to anyone. I don't remember a single instance where the Council objected to what was written in any of these mailings. In fact, I only recall enthusiastic approval. Then, with the first mass mailing of newly developed materials, we also sent them to the entire congregation so that they could provide us with feedback. While we never received any negative feedback from the congregation regarding the message these mailings communicated, we did get plenty of suggestions on how to improve their formatting and appearance – like improving the clarity of the images, shifting the text around, or making it larger and easier to read, spelling and punctuation, and, of course, reducing word count. Of all the mailings we sent, this one seemed to be the congregation's favorite, as it garnered from them the most positive feedback, the most unsolicited feedback, and the least negative feedback of them all.

The next, and final, post in this series will feature the postcard we sent in time for arrival during Thanksgiving Week – the week before the beginning of Advent. That card will speak for itself, but I will also include some brief personal thoughts regarding the vocational needs of the evangelizing congregation and the Evangelical Church at large. More on that next time.

Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Pentecost

The Feast of Pentecost

We Lutherans Believe in the Holy Spirit!


In my previous post, entitled Confessional Lutheran Evangelism: Confessing Scripture's Message about Easter, I promised to feature the tri-fold brochure we mailed to new residents in our community for the Feast of Pentecost – the third most important holiday of the Church Year – and as the reader can see, Pentecost was used as a pretense to talk about the second and third person's of the Trinity. And we had much to say! Part of the reason for this is that the Bible's teaching about the Holy Spirit is not just located in a few conveniently located sections of Scripture, but in many places and in many contexts. Another reason is that the work of the Holy Spirit is so broad and so important that it is difficult to be meaningful in only a few words. Most important, however, is the fact that in contemporary times, with the confusion over the Holy Spirit wrought by Pentcostalism, Charismaticism, and Holiness Movements within Christianity, and the growing dominance of wretched Eastern and New Age “spirituality,” we felt that to discuss the Holy Spirit at all, meant that we also had to remediate the rampant false notions surrounding “God's Spirit” and how it is that we “commune” with Him.

There is a big smile on my face, as I chuckle to myself while writing this. This was the last straw for the pamphlet format. Mostly for good, or at least justifiable reasons. These 8.5x11 inch tri-folds, and the 8.5x14 inch quarterfold we used for Good Friday, were full-color, double sided prints. Up to this point, we had relied on a printing service that provided us an astoundingly good deal on printing costs, making it possible for us to print enough pamphlets and envelopes to send them to all residents in our community who had recently moved there. That source became unavailable to us, causing costs to rise sharply, and making it impossible for us to continue distributing the message of Law and Gospel to all new residents in this format. A second reason was the labor involved. A team of us spent quite a bit of time for each one of these pamphlet mailings, just preparing them to go in the mail – inserting the pamphlets in the envelopes, affixing labels and stamps to envelopes, and sealing them. While we enjoyed the work, and were happy to do it, there was also a desire to reduce the labor involved, if possible... A third reason – well, let's face it, there's simply a whole lot of words on that page. Who would ever read such a thing? Many folks in the congregation expressed some embarrassment over this fact. After some investigation, we found a service that, if we could reduce/redevelop our mailings to 5x8 inch postcards, would print and mail them for around $.67 per card – and that included full color printing on both sides (the opposite side containing the addressee and the return address of our congregation, which in our case included a color logo, service times, directions, etc). With the cost of data around $.30 per address, that was a total cost of about $1 per mailing, resulting in a significant reduction in labor and cost, and allowing us to continue sending these mailings to all new residents, and even others if we chose (like those on our prospects list, or special names that people in the congregation asked us to include). And, for better or worse, we were forced to be more concise.

But there is another reason for smiling.

Just WHAT were WE expecting?
Nothing. We were expecting nothing in return for our effort. We, by this point, had completely rejected any and every notion that, as a result of our efforts, God owed us an increase of some sort – either in visitor count, prospects, church membership, or the church revenue such increases inevitably result in. Since we weren't owed an increase, we weren't looking for one. Rather, out of pure Joy and Gratitude, our “mission” was simply to share that which made us joyful: the completed work of Jesus Christ on behalf of all mankind, and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit through the Means of Grace, to distribute the Eternal Blessings He earned for us. We “expected” only what God promises us in the Bible: that His Word will not return to Him void, but accomplish that for which He sent it; that one man plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. In sending out the Word, in using the Means through which the Holy Spirit exclusively works, we knew that among those who came into contact with these materials, who actually read them, some would merely have had a seed planted in them (seeds are not ready for harvest), some would be nurtured (plants that need nurturing are not ready for harvest), and some would be ready for harvest. Of those ready for harvest, we fully admitted, we may see them or we may not. But “harvest” actually does mean harvest, whether they come to our church or not. So, we had complete confidence in the Holy Spirit to produce an increase where, when and if He willed it, and we could only have this confidence given that we used the Means through which He works to accomplish it.

If, instead, we had bound ourselves to the expectations, and thus the methods, of the Church Growth Movement, our “mission” would not have been to “simply” share the Message of Scripture – it would have been far more complicated, far more calculating on human behaviour (i.e., “stimulus and response”), far more exploitive of human wants and weaknesses (i.e., “felt needs”), far more confident in the organization to measure and meet them. If we bound ourselves to the expectations and methods of the Church Growth Movement, and took the advise of those luring Lutherans into such bondage, the congregation as an organization would completely displace any Message of Scripture – completely robbing those who were reached using these mailings of the Means through which the Holy Spirit works by replacing the Message telling how God has met every man's eternal need through Christ, with a message telling how the congregation can meet the temporal needs of some people in its community, through educational services, social groups (men's/women's groups, youth groups, etc.), or opportunities for involvement in various activities, like music, sports, or community philanthropy. Instead of the Means of Grace, through which the Holy Spirit works to Call, Gather and Enlighten His Elect, we would be forced into using the means of man, through which the congregation struggles, like a fast-food chain or supermarket, to call gather and enlighten new visitors and loyal patrons.

Rather than submit ourselves to the “Bondage of Expectations” that the Church Growth Movement would place on us, we refused, choosing, instead, the liberty to freely speak the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This Message, which starts off by offending it's hearers with the Law, with the reality of their own sin, further offends by pointing them to the Rock of Offense, Jesus Christ, declaring that they cannot save themselves before a perfectly Just and Righteous God, that only the Righteousness of Christ avails before God, and that this righteousness and the forgiveness of their sins is theirs only in Christ. Such a Message completely defies the thoroughly human logic of the Church Growth Movement, which requires that an individual, or collectively “the public,” be ingratiated to the evangelist, or to the church as an organization, before the Gospel can be fed to them in bits and pieces, being careful all the while to avoid communicating anything that might be “offensive.” In other words, the public has to like you first, before anyone will trust you enough to listen to what the Bible says. This sort of “friendship evangelism,” though logical, is complete unbiblical garbage.

The unregenerate are estranged from God. They are at war with Him. They hate Him and they hate what He has to say. The Bible tells us this. The Evangelist, just like the congregation, represents God. They are His Messengers in the World, and they speak the Message He has given them to say. As a result, the unregenerate hate God's Messengers just as much as they hate God, and they hate the Message He speaks through them. The Bible tells us this, too. It doesn't matter if you make friends first, they are still going to hate you on account of Christ! In fact, they may hate you all the more once they find out you only became friends with them in order to “more effectively” proselytize them! This sort of “friendship evangelism” promoted by the Church Growth Movement is nothing but a rickety crutch to avoid the discomfort of the Truth – that the World hates us on account of Jesus – and ultimately, leaves the Christian unprepared to face the inevitable: conflict with the unregenerate, the enemies of the Gospel, who reject and revile God, His Message, and His Messengers. This kind of unpreparedness, perpetuated by the Church Growth Movement, which requires friendship with the World in order to “grow the church,” is demonstrated in the shallowness of contemporary American Christianity, and has equipped Christians with only a partial Gospel that is supplemented by services and social activities offered by the congregation. No wonder Christians run and hide when called upon to share their faith or to confidently speak their convictions! CGM does not equip them with the biblical Gospel. Not by a longshot. And not having the Truth, they lack the boldness to stand and speak.

So, rather than the wisdom of this world, we chose the foolishness of God. We chose to rely exclusively on the Holy Spirit's work through the Means of Grace. Thus, this tri-fold pamphlet represented a major fist in the air, raised against the Church Growth Movement and those pushing its lies. In fact, so complete was our rejection of Church Growth, that, though we had the data in our possession, we refused on grounds of principle to use that data to calculate and report statistics on “visitor rate,” “baptism rate,” or “ average cost per new member,” that might be associated with these evangelistic efforts. We also feared that if we started doing so, we may be tempted to begin binding ourselves to the human expectations of measurable numeric increase.

But, there is yet another reason for me to smile. And even chuckle a little bit.

Even though we refused to keep statistics, the few of us who were involved with managing these mailings recognized the names and addresses of the people we sent these materials to. It was unavoidable. Yes, in fact, we did see visitors. Yes, in fact, we did see prospects. Yes, in fact, we were blessed with new members. The reason I smile and chuckle, is this: of all the mailings we sent, this single Pentecost mailing, with all of its words, with all of its complex sentences, with all of its theological concepts, with all of the human logic hurled against it which would suggest “no one will ever read this, no one will ever come to your church as a result of this mailing” yielded more visitors than anything else “we had done” – all of the other mailings, all of the radio and television programs, all of the community involvement we engaged in. I know because I recognized the names in the guestbook. I know because a few families even came to church that day with these pamphlets in their hands, as if they were their tickets to church, saying, “We got this in the mail and wanted to come today.” And second behind this mailing, was the original quarterfold pamphlet we had developed for Good Friday, which had so many words on it that we couldn't fit it on an 8.5x11 inch sheet of paper, but had to go to 8.5x14 inches. In fact, in that case, one family, who never even visited, sent us a thank you note that included a picture of their daughter holding that Good Friday pamphlet. The advise of the Church Growth Movement is bunk. “What works then?”, one might ask. Word and Sacrament works. Nothing else works, so the more the better. And we know this because that's what the Bible says.