Fellow redeemed in Christ,

What's good about the public ministry? What's good about the office of a Christian pastor or teacher? God-willing, we shall be considering this question during the next few months.

We know that the ministry of the Word is little appreciated in our day, and that those men and women who have been called into the preaching or teaching ministry by the Lord are little regarded by the world. But that's nothing new. In his letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul could say of himself and his co—workers in the Gospel: "It seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ . . . We are weak . . . We are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world" (1 Cor. 4:9-13, NIV).

Even Christians at times put down the public ministry as something hardly to be desired. They point out how thankless a job it is, how discouraging it can often be, how lacking it generally is in the nice things of life that most people demand for themselves, In one of our classrooms last year a student commented in a matter-of-fact way: ”We all know what a sacrifice a person has to make to be a pas- tor or a Christian day school teacher! "

But over against all such downgrading of the public ministry by the unbelieving world or by unthinking Christians, the Lord God says in our text: "This is a trustworthy saying: If anyone seeks after the office of a spiritual overseer [that’s what 'bishop' means], he desires an excellent work. " The work of a called minister of the Gospel, the work of watching over the spiritual welfare of Christ's sheep and lambs, is a good work, a noble work, an excellent work in the sight of God!

There are many good things about the public ministry which the Bible teaches us. Some of those which we will consider in the weeks to come are the following: 1) It is ordained by Jesus Christ Himself; 2) It serves to extend the Lord's Kingdom here on earth; 3) It is effective through the Gospel of reconciliation; 4) It carries out its work in fields which are ripe for the harvest, 5) It relies on the power of the Holy Spirit; 6) It serves the on-going spiritual needs of the flock; and 7) It aims at the eternal salvation of both shepherd and flock.

We shall also be using, stanza by stanza, one of the finest of our hymns on the public ministry, number 485: "Lord Jesus, Who Art Come." That this hymn is in our hymnal is due in large measure to the efforts of two of the patriarchs of our CLC, Pastor G. W. Fischer and Dr. Nor- man A. Madson. This, of course, happened some twenty years before the founding of the CLC about 1940, when the Lutheran Hymnal was in preparation. Pastor Fischer, who later became pastor of Immanuel Church, Mankato, loved the old German hymn and sought to get it included in the hymnal. Unfortunately, no English translation was then available. To satisfy this need Dr. Madson, who later served as a seminary dean in Mankato, set about to translate it. You will not find Dr. Madson listed as the translator, however, because the hymnal committee chose to make a few minor changes in the translation prior to printing.

The hymn writer in the third verse of this hymn is surely echoing the words of our text when it refers to the Christian ministry as something that is "blessed":

O blessed ministry

Of reconciliation,

That shows the way to God

And brings to us salvation!

By Thine evangel pure,

Lord, Thou preserv'st Thy fold,

Dost call, enlighten, keep,

Dost comfort and uphold. Amen.