Lutheran Witness: November 2017

In this month’s Lutheran Witness, we share trends, data and individual “snapshot” stories that, taken together, offer a detailed look at the state of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in 2017.

Contents

From the President: A time to be “Joy:fully Lutheran”

Features:

Where have all the Christians gone? — Heath R. Curtis

What are they seeking? Pointing millennials to Jesus in a secular age — Chad Kendall

Snapshot: Harvey — Kevin Armbrust

Snapshot: First, Knoxville — Melanie Bartholomay

Snapshot: Ferguson — Rachel Bomberger

Snapshot: Kenya — Sarah Kanoy

Snapshot: Trinity, Conklin — Terri Kober and Ruth Mackie

Snapshot: Seminary — Joshua Vanderhyde and Nathaniel Jensen

Faces of the LCMS — photo spread by Erik M. Lunsford

Reports:

LCMS Disaster Response

Averages and attendance

Rostered church workers

Expenses

Giving

Office of National Mission

Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty

Office of International Mission

Lutheran K–12 schools

Concordia University System

LCMS Seminaries

Departments:

searching scriptures: Christ the Rock — Joshua P. H. Conradt

From the editor

What exactly is the state of our Synod? As the Rev. Heath Curtis points out (p. 6), The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod hasn’t seen a year-to-year gain in member congregations since 2001. Numbers from the Association of Religion Data Archives are even more alarming: By their count (measuring individuals rather than congregations), the LCMS hasn’t experienced a growth year since 1997.

The hard task set before The Lutheran Witness this November is this: to tell the truth about the state of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in 2017 by presenting data from this past year and, where possible, the past 20 years.

When we turn our gaze away from big data trends, however, and examine individual Lutherans and their congregations (as we have tried to do here with a series of “snapshot” stories from around the Synod), the picture begins to look very different. In these stories, we don’t find cause for despair. We see instead “love and faith and service and patient endurance” (REV. 2:19) as God’s people hold fast to Christ crucified in the face of every adversity.

What’s the state of our Synod? I’ll leave that for you to decide. Of this, though, I remain confident: No matter what storms may assail us — be they hurricanes or legal battles or long-term demographic slides — we will continue to weather them, joyfully, together.

Rachel Bomberger
Managing Editor, The Lutheran Witness