Stories from the Mission Field | CGO Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about peace. I think for me, peace is the biggest desire in my life. Not only do I wish for peace in the world, I also want peace in my friendships, peace in my marriage, peace for my future children. But I’m not known for my peace. In fact, for a long time, I was known for my fire. I would go from upset to angry in a moment; I was frustrated always. I wanted to burn bridges at the first sign of conflict. And yet, my desire was peace.

My husband’s story of faith is miraculous. He was born to two loving Christian parents, had an infant baptism, was confirmed in eighth grade, and grew up knowing Jesus as Lord. In his senior year of high school, he became aware of God calling him to pastoral ministry. Now, here we are at the seminary.

One of my best friends grew up in a denomination that doesn’t believe that the Bible is infallible. Her family was actively involved in the congregation, and she enjoyed it. But she was always questioning that position, always thinking, ”If some of it is false, how can I trust the rest of it?” In college, she learned from professors to articulate why the Bible is God’s true and inerrant Word. She married an LCMS pastor. Miraculous.

The girl who ended up my maid of honor grew up in the church but without her (very much alive) parents. Another good friend came to faith in her Lutheran high school during religion class. Another struggled with the problem of pain. And another is a lifelong Lutheran whose parents’ involvement in the Church inspired her walk with Jesus.

All these stories are the miraculous work of Jesus Christ. And throughout Scripture, we see that we are called to tell others about what Christ has done in our lives.

I didn’t go to a Christian university, but I was pretty involved with one during college. I met my closest friends, drew deeper into my faith, and learned so much about Christ through the professors, staff, and events held by the university. My life and my faith would be so different if it hadn’t been for that school in the Concordia University System. I am grateful that God has given us these institutions.

But recently, and not just because of the ongoing pandemic that has changed the educational landscape, Christian colleges—specifically, our Concordias—have been struggling. Here are some ways you can support the evangelism that is done at Christian universities.

I remember in grade school, reading books from what I considered fascinating historical times. The American Revolution, the Great Depression, and the Westward Expansion eras always drew my attention. I remember thinking, “Wow, life was so different and difficult back then.” I thought that a lot of what took place happened because it was the “old times” and that, even though I knew in my short lifetime there had been trouble and turmoil worldwide, it would never touch me. But now here we are amid a pandemic. And our lives have all been changed by what is happening throughout the world today. While all of this trouble and turmoil are around us, we can remember that this is nothing new. Throughout time, plagues and unrest have been a staple. Take a look below at a few times in the Bible where God has used turmoil in His salvation story.

I am not great at being positive. I’m a little bit of a Debbie Downer. My default mode is to feel everything is bad and there’s nothing I can do to make it better. Some people will say this is a good thing—to recognize that, apart from Christ, nothing is good, everything leads to death (morbid I know, but true). But this is not 100 percent true for all things. When it comes to people—our neighbors, family members, friends—we are to act in a different way. The Eighth Commandment tells us, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Exodus 20:16). As Luther describes in his Small Catechism, we are to “explain everything in the kindest way” when it comes to our neighbors.

It’s no secret that in America the Church across denominational lines is shrinking. The LCMS is no different. We, of course, are not without hope. God’s kingdom will have the ultimate victory. That doesn’t mean we say, “Oh, well,” to our young adults leaving and never consider why they’re leaving; we need to examine our retention. A few months ago, I wrote a post which used empirical data from the LCMS young-adults study to offer hypotheticals to explain the departure of many young people. This post will not do the same. Instead, in this post, I’ll take a qualitative approach to the question “Why do some people stay in the LCMS from childhood through their entire lives?”

A few months ago, I wrote on Luther’s thoughts on three components of the Christian life. I reflected on how it leads us to witness Christ. In doing so, I talked briefly about how living the Christian life leads us to repentance. The life of a believer is one of continual repentance. As such a vital and important part of the Christian life, I’d like to dive a little more into repentance and how through repentance we love our neighbors.

We all need Jesus. We always have and always will. Sometimes I think we forget that in our desire for things to be good or normal or best, we’ll always need Jesus. Even now, when we’ve been given more “free time,” maybe you feel as though there are a billion other things to think about or do besides go to Jesus? Maybe you always say  you will later? Or you’re feeling angry. Maybe you feel like you’ve prayed enough. Or you feel like your prayers fell on deaf ears. Could it be that you’ve tossed God to the side in exchange for the scrolling of the news feed or social media profiles?

Within a couple of days, our lives have been upended. Events that were supposed to be coming up have been canceled, many of us are working from home for the first time, and even churches have suspended in-person gatherings. It may feel pretty bleak, but a side effect of all this chaos is that people are looking for hope.

It was the second day of tennis practice my junior year of high school. I was team captain and ready to begin the season. My coach pulled me aside about halfway through warm-ups and told me that we’d have new person joining. That this person’s family was new in our tiny town. Despite the fact that the new person had never played before, she wanted to try the team so she could make connections before the school year officially started in three weeks.