Lutheran Witness: November 2025

The November issue discusses the church’s mission and witness through proclaiming the Gospel, planting churches and showing mercy — in our own land and around the world.

From the President: The Gospel Leads to Churches

Life in the Church Year: All Saints Day & The Last Sunday of the Church Year: Stir-Up Sunday Pudding

Features:

God’s Work, Our Witness: A Lutheran theology of mission — Roy S. Askins

Four Gifts on the Mountain: Exploring Jesus’ “Great Commission” — Daniel Christian Voth

The Apostles’ Task and Ours: Planting Lutheran Churches is the heart of Lutheran mission — Adam Lehman

Mercy Work and the Church’s Mission: Taking God’s love to the world — Danelle Putnam Schumann

A Place at the Table: Welcoming our neighbors into the family of God — Tyler McMiller

An Urgent Call for Missionaries: The harvest is ripe in Africa — Shauen Trump

Joy to the World! A Set Apart to Serve feature — James Baneck

From the Web: As He Leads Us — Daniel M. Van Rooy

Departments:

Snippets: News from around the LCMS and the world

Worship: Depart in Peace

Formula of Concord Reading Plan: November — Election

Searching Scripture: Opening the Old Testament: The New Heavens and New Earth

From the editor:

May God bestow on us His grace, With blessings rich provide us;
And may the brightness of His face To life eternal guide us,
That we His saving health may know, His gracious will and pleasure,
And also to the nations show Christ’s riches without measure
And unto God convert them.

Martin Luther wrote this hymn, our LSB 823 and 824, as a paraphrase of Psalm 67. The reformers didn’t talk much about “mission work.” This concept developed later in the history of the church. But this does not mean that they were without the notion of God’s kingdom advancing, or of witnessing to Christ before the nations.

As LW’s executive editor Roy Askins writes in this issue (p. 8), Martin Luther saw the work of the church “holistically”: What we call “mission work” today is not a special task of the church, but something inherent to her normal operation. It is the tasks that Christ has given to His church, especially the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, that lead to the advancing of His kingdom, by His grace. And so, even today, the heart of LCMS mission work is planting and fostering Lutheran churches, near and far, to offer Christ’s gifts to people around the world (see p. 16). From these churches flow the proclamation of the Gospel (see p. 20) and acts of mercy done in the name of Christ (see p. 18).

As the church, we answer the calls of those crying out for the Gospel, the Means of Grace and right theological teaching — as many are today on the continent of Africa, so many that our LCMS Africa region is in desperate need of more missionaries (see p. 22), and as the Van Rooy family was, stationed in Japan during COVID lockdowns after our fellowship with the Japan Lutheran Church was broken over women’s ordination (see p. 25). “For a time, it felt as though our small group of confessional Lutherans were truly alone,” writes David Van Rooy. “But the Lord does not leave His people without provision. In the wilderness, He sends bread from heaven and water from the rock. He sends servants.”

Those who receive God’s Word and Sacrament, wherever they are, rightly thank God alone for this provision. Discussions of Jesus’ “Great Commission” in Matthew 28 can often become highly legalistic (see p. 11). However, to convert hearts is always God’s work alone. As the authors of our Formula of Concord put it, “God also knows and has determined for everyone the time and hour of his call and conversion. But this time has not been revealed to us. Therefore, we have the command always to keep proclaiming the Word, entrusting the time and hour of conversion to God” (FC SD XI 56). It is God alone who grows His church. We pray that He may do so through us.

And so, in the freedom of the Gospel, be Christ’s witness to those around you, for whose sins He has died (1 John 2:2) — always entrusting their souls and futures not to your own labor, but to His loving care.

In His name,