Dispatch #30
Thursday, October 3
Pella, Iowa

On this tour to date, I have spoken with 3,250 people in rallies and in small groups--more already than I had first calculated to be my final number near 3,000. And though I was unable to be physically present at Concordia in Morehead, there were 1,300 people in the evening worship service where my taped sermon on the anniversary of 9/11 was played to good effect.

"Partners," I say over and over to these good listeners: "Please be more than listeners to Lutheran Vespers. Become partners with me and Susan and Brenda and Dixie in this most important ministry."

The partnership of people all across the nation will lay down a foundation of hearts and minds and souls upon which to build a broadcasting system that shall not depend solely upon one person, one speaker! What we do on Lutheran Vespers belongs to our God. It is a piercing mission. And under the title "Lutheran" it finds people too lost, too shy, too afraid ever to enter the rituals of liturgical worship. It speaks grace to those whose souls are shredded with hatred and guilt.

If ever the ministry is reduced to a single voice, a single person, then it is in danger, surely! In danger of failure when one should leave. In danger of internal sins, internal goals too personal to be sacred. In danger, externally (though still from within the Church's administration) of dismissing jealousies or the devouring suspicions in others that LV's goals are too personal to be supported. Allowing the ministry to depend upon one voice invites sinning within and without the radio ministry itself. I know. I know both dangers.

But if the whole Church--the ELCA and its members scattered throughout the U. S.--owns and supports and sustains this ministry; if the ELCA recognizes the effect of the ministry as coming from God through the human structures of this worshipping Church, then speakers may come and go and Lutheran Vespers will continue untroubled. It can (it will, in fact) grow. It can (it will) cast the broadest net to draw in fish of every kind--to draw them first to Jesus Christ and then to the Church that worships Jesus, that refuses to worship any other God but the God made known to us in the work and the person of Jesus.

Walt