Manifesto: God's Call to the Church in Each Place

A Report of the Lutheran Church in America, 1966

Adopted by the Lutheran Church in America at its 1966 convention to be read in each congregation at all services on Sunday, October 30, 1966.

THIS IS GOD'S WORLD: the object of God's love, the arena of man's achievement, and the scene of man's struggles.

THIS IS GOD'S TIME: exciting and full of hope, confusing, and plagued with anxiety.

THE CHURCH IS GOD'S PEOPLE: the new humanity in Christ, called into being, sustained and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

God's people are sent into the world to speak his Word and to be his agents of reconciliation.

As his people we confess that we are hesitant in our faith, timid in our ventures, and halting in our obedience.

Yet the Church continues to be God's own people, the community of faith and love and servanthood. Centered in Jesus Christ, this community is continually renewed as it relives his life, death, and resurrection in worship and mission.

Faithfulness in our day requires that the congregation come to a clearer understanding of what it means to be the Church in each place and welcome today's world as the given setting for its mission.

Therefore, the Lutheran Church in America calls upon each congregation

1. To support in prayer and uphold in proclamation the oneness of the Church in all places and at all times.

2. To recognize that it shares in the oneness of the Church through its union with other congregations in the Lutheran Church in America.

3. To see in its own life the presence of the Lutheran Church in America and in what this church does corporately in North America and throughout the world, an extension of its own mission, assuming a full and generous share of the responsibilities which this entails.

4. To join with other Lutheran congregations, especially those nearby, in mutual counsel and action, gladly extending the fellowship of its pulpit and altar to all of them.

5. To engage in cooperative action with neighboring congregations and councils of churches which with it confess Jesus Christ as divine Lord and Saviour.

6. To be alert to the changing needs, moods, and currents of the modern world in order to fulfill its ministry more effectively.

7. To adapt its methods and programs to the specific community or communities which it is called to serve, recognizing especially the dramatic increase in the proportion of youth in the general population.

8. To lift its voice in concord and to work in concert with forces for good, cooperating with church and other groups participating in activities that promote justice, relieve misery, and reconcile the estranged.

9. To proclaim that God is present in mercy and judgment in man's life and work, in his searching and striving, in his art, science, and culture, and in the ordering of society and the universe.

10. To welcome the new light shed on God's Word and world by sound scholarship.

11. To strive to deepen the inner life of its members through regular worship, the Sacrament of the Altar, the study of Scripture meditation and prayer

12. To appreciate its rich heritage of worship and to be open to new expressions of adoration of God.

13. To be the family of God in which those who suffer the bruises of life find support and help, the complacent are stirred, and the creative and venturesome are encouraged.

14. To equip its members through a deepened understanding of the Christian faith to perform their ministries in the experiences of daily life, at work and at leisure, in family and neighborhood, and as responsible citizens

15. To seek, welcome, and involve in its fellowship all men without regard to race, status, or background.

16. To examine its organizational life at regular intervals to make sure that every part of it is an authentic expression of the gospel and contributes to the fulfilling of its mission.

In this modern mass society and in these changing times there is danger that our congregations may have lost touch with the central dynamics of our society. If congregations are static and immobile in spiritual life or in outward service to mankind, the church will be irrelevant to this urban oriented culture and unable to grasp its many and varied opportunities.

Each congregation must find the means and methods by which it best fulfills God's call to be his people. No statement can in itself be the final word. The faith is eternal. The forces with which it must deal and the environment in which it lives are in ferment. This is the natural climate and condition in which the church carries on its work. These do not diminish its joyous conviction that the Word of God is the power to redeem our day.

The following recommendations by the Commission studying the Nature and Mission of the Congregation were also adopted at the Kansas City convention and are included here for your information.

1. That the above manifesto be approved, and that the secretary of the church be instructed to send a copy to each congregation for use on the last Sunday in October, 1966 urging that it be read to the congregation at all services on that day.

2. That the Executive Council be instructed to arrange for the preparation of study materials based on the report and manifesto for use in LCA congregations, and to devise procedures to achieve their most effective use.

3. That the president of the church thereafter call upon each congregation to undertake, under the guidance and assistance of the synod, a study and judgment of its life and work, using the report of this commission and the manifesto as its guide.

4. That each synod, as part of its constitutional responsibility, initiate and intensify studies, conversations and negotiations looking toward

a. strengthening each congregation as it seeks to carry out the mission of the church;
b. increasing cooperation among congregations in geographical areas to carry out the mission of the church more effectively and to eliminate undue duplication of services and programs;
c. desirable alignment of congregations in pastoral charges;
d. desirable merger of congregations;
e. subsidizing congregations incapable of self-support when such subsidy is appropriate;
f. disbanding congregations in accordance with the provisions in the synod's constitution;
g. assuming temporary administration of a congregation by the synod at the request of the congregation concerned or with its concurrence.

5. That each synod

a. be encouraged to offer a ministry to special groups of persons (e.g., persons under sheltered care in eleemosynary institutions, persons in penal institutions, persons in recreational centers, persons in educational institutions) and at its discretion to organize such groups as congregations or, outside the normal pattern of congregational life, as chapels;
b. be authorized to call ministers for the latter purpose;
c. establish a registry of church membership for individuals, not under church discipline, who cannot establish or maintain a living relationship to a congregation, as the Lutheran Church in America has done for those who respond to our church's ministry in Stockholm, Sweden, and for military personnel.

6. That this convention encourage the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. to develop its proposed Office of Research, Statistics and Archives to provide information and guidance to our church and its synods regarding the demographic and other forces affecting the church.

7. That the Lutheran Church in America resume in 1970 the study summarized in this report renewing and re-examining for that purpose the mandate given to this commission.

As used in this report, Church (with a capital initial letter) refers to the entire Church of Jesus Christ, and church (without a capital initial letter) refers to the institutional church (the LCA, or another denomination, or a congregation).