Dr. C.F.W. Walther asked to whom has the responsibility to preach the Gospel among all people of the earth have been committed? He answers, “Here we see that it is the people of the New Testament, or the Holy Christian Church, that God has prepared or established, to show forth His praise in all the world. That means that the church is to make known the great works of God for the salvation of men, or that which is the same thing, to preach the Gospel to every creature. Even Isaiah gives this testimony, having been enlightened by the Holy Spirit: The true mission society that has been instituted by God is nothing else than the Christian church itself, that is the totality of all those who from the heart believe in Jesus Christ.
Pastor Ted Krey the Regional Director for Latin America was given this banner from his first church in Venezuela. It now hangs in a mission start in Santiago, Dominican Republic. It depicts the 6 Chief Parts of Christian Doctrine in the catechism and was given in thanksgiving for his witness to the Gospel through the catechism. As I heard stated at the Mission conference earlier this year, “Witness to Christ is as simple as John 3:16, but as fulsome as the Gospel of the incarnation, the humiliation, and exultation of Christ, his Baptism and ours, Absolution, the Holy Supper, the doctrines of grace, conversion, election, bound will, and more. The Gospel is in fact replete throughout the Scriptures and to be applied pervasively and winsomely in manifold ways according to the need of the hearers. As confession, the witness of the Gospel rejoices in standing for the creedal truth as it is in Jesus. It is as simple as the earliest confessions of the faith (“Jesus 7 Christ is Lord,” Philippians 2:11; LC II, 27), or the Small Catechism, or as replete as the Nicene Creed or the Formula of Concord. The Church’s goal is always to witness unto salvation in the simple message of salvation by the blood of Jesus, and growth into the full confession of the orthodox doctrine from Luther’s Catechism.
