06/16/2026
Wise words from Rev. President Elect Haberstock at the LCC Convention that are not only inspiring as we consider how to pray for the LCMS' daughter synod, but are also very applicable to our our situation.
Brothers and sisters in Christ,
Many of you congratulating me have said you will pray for me. Please do. Please continue to. Because you have just elected one more frail man, with feet of clay, who thinks out loud, and talks too much. If the Lord’s church depended on men like me, we’d be doomed. Thanks be to God, Christ the son of the living God is the foundation of the Church, and not sinners like Ed, Ralph, Bob, Tim, or Dave. So please lift me and our whole church before God’s mercy seat.
I grew up in a LCC parsonage and attended LCC’s founding convention as a 12 year old, 38 years ago here in Winnipeg. In home, parish, and convention I heard about the hopes and dreams of an independent LCC, training her own pastors. And it’s taken 38 years, much blood, sweat, tears, prayers, sacrificial giving, and support from our mother Missouri, but this convention marks the first time our President, Vice President, Regional Pastors, and seminary presidents are all Canadian trained pastors. The whole slate for President and VP were Canadian trained pastors. So LCC, we’ve grown up! Maybe that’s appropriate for a 38 year old. And now we see whether this dream will bear good fruit that will endure. So, again, pray for your church!
As this dream comes to fruition, Canada itself, the formerly Christian West, and most of the world is no longer replacing itself. Birth rates are plummeting worldwide (with Africa and parts of the Middle East the only exception). It’s like humanity just stopped believing Psalm 127 that “children are a heritage from the Lord… blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.” Somehow, we’ve set aside our Lord’s repeated command, to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28; 9:1, 7; Lev. 26:9; Gen. 11:1-9; Ac. 2). And while it doesn’t surprise us that the world would reject what our Lord says, we believers in God’s Word have also fallen down on the job. And many of you here can’t do much about it. For unless the Lord makes you like Abraham and Sarah, or Elizabeth and Zachariah there are no more babies coming for you. Over my life most of us didn’t even realize that our own attitudes and actions were being shaped more by the world than by the Lord and His Word as we had fewer and fewer babies over the generations. And as we look at the impacts of what we have done, it is important to realize it and repent, for our Lord is gracious and merciful.
I highlight LCC’s numerical decline because it is a serious issue and we’ve also been beating ourselves up over it. But I want to highlight that this is a demographic issue, not an issue of what we believe, teach, and confess. Many pastors and parishioners have looked at declining congregations and said, “What are we doing wrong Lord? How have we failed?” Or we’ve despaired and said, “LCC is dying. It’s done. What’s the point?” Repent of that despair. While it is true that many of our children and grandchildren are getting their faith stolen from them by society, the media, and the educational establishment, who so often work hand in hand with the prince of this world it is not true that the Gospel has stopped working. Clearly, we need to keep inoculating our kids against every argument and lofty opinion that holds itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:4-6). But even more than those issues, we are facing an immediate crisis, first and foremost, of fertility. And not just the formerly Christian West is facing it, but the whole world is beginning to face this and wake up to this reality. And that fact puts a whole new spin on the challenges we have to recruit and train pastors, let alone to recruit and train parishioners. For our challenges are exactly the same as all of Canada’s challenges to recruit and train workers in every field.
Over the last 20 years we’ve all noticed that our medical field, elder care, universities, and almost all entry level roles in businesses are being filled primarily by newcomers to Canada. And when we realize this is happening because the Canadians who already lived here haven’t replaced themselves it makes us realize that our seminaries, pastors, and congregations are in the same boat. To illustrate this point, why do you think LCC has received 5 pastors from Australia over the last 4 years, and 6 from Brazil in the last 9? Let alone the pastors colloquizing from Ethiopia, India, and Haiti and being trained by LCC from Sudan, China, and elsewhere? This demographic issue is a Canada problem, not a LCC problem.
Our Lord who says that the gates of hell shall not prevail against His Church will always provide for His Church, for the harvest is plentiful, but the workers have always been few, so pray for workers in the harvest! (Matthew 9:37-38)
So our own fertility crisis is a big issue LCC and Canada are facing. Canada’s government and industry have been trying to solve this demographic issue by massive immigration over the last 20 years, rather than by changing our culture to value marriage and the blessing of children. And since the government isn’t encouraging younger generations to get married and have more children and seek to make it easier for them to do that, we need to start encouraging that and working as communities to help our younger generations to be able to start families. And our historically high levels of immigration place strain on all aspects of society, such as the current housing crisis, let alone the challenge of so many people coming with differing cultural expectations, ways of thinking, and differing languages. Some of Canada’s challenges are not unlike the challenges the world had right after the Tower of Babel. And those challenges, sadly, can increase xenophobia and cause the love of many to grow cold. Especially as many newcomers not only have a different culture and values, but many do not believe in Jesus.
But then, some of them do believe in Jesus, or want to learn about Him. For instance, here in Winnipeg, almost every congregation has been blessed by at least one very active African family who bring new life and zeal to the congregation, let alone excellent flavours at the potluck. And some congregations here have experienced an influx of Chinese seekers and believers who are interested in Christianity. So, these times are turbulent, but full of opportunity that our Lord has placed before us!
You may also have noticed that this convention passes the baton from Baby Boomer leaders to Gen X leaders. As the last of the Baby Boomers retire most names on the slates were Gen Xers. The generational pattern here is like the moment when Moses ordained Joshua as leader and gave him his marching orders (Num. 27:18-23). And if you’ve read Exodus recently, you may have noted that of the Exodus generation, only Joshua and Caleb, survived the wilderness wanderings and entered the Promised Land (Num. 14:26-30). And sadly, though most of my generation grew up with some connection to the church, very, very few in Gen X still find themselves inside the fold of the Church. It’s as though my generation died to faith during our wilderness wanderings. But the generation born during those wanderings under God’s appointed leader Joshua—a type of Jesus who was to come—conquered the promised land. I don’t know what the Lord has in store, for I am no Joshua, but the Lord is certainly stirring something especially amongst young men in their 20s and 30s not just in the West, but globally. So, are you ready to catch that wave and to meet that need amongst those young men?
Many of you have noticed young men walking into your churches. Not in large numbers, but those who show up, are committed. Whether they come from some other confession of Christianity, from secular unbelief, or another religion altogether, when they come in our doors, they’ve often already read the Book of Concord, or listened to hours of Lutheran Youtubers and podcasters like Pastors Bryan Wolfmueller, Jordan Cooper, Jonathon Fisk, or Chris Rosebrough.
These young men who walk in are searching for authentic Lutheranism according to our Confessions and our historic liturgy. Ask yourself, will they find it in your congregation? As our congregations get smaller the Lord may be pruning the branches of His vine right now, but He always prunes to bring forth new growth, and this appears to be the beginnings of that new growth (John 15:1-2).
So, Baby Boomers, we thank you for your devoted service to the Lord in His Church. You’ve borne the burden through the heat of the day and gotten us to this point. And sadly, as your retirement comes, there are not always those in our congregations needed to take up leadership. But I encourage you to pray for, ask, encourage, support, and mentor those who are younger than you to take up leadership of your congregations. They may not do things the way you would like them to be done. In their own generation they may see things differently than you do. The Baby Boomers desired informality and not being shackled by traditions which were seen as getting in the way of authenticity and relational intimacy. But these are not the ways of many in younger generations. Maybe you’ve already had younger pastors whom you think are taking the congregation in the wrong direction from your generational perspective. But truth be told, the pathways that may have been meaningful to older generations, that you may still think are what the church needs to do, is not what these young folks are looking for. They need tradition and theology, serious teaching, preaching, and depth, because nothing in their experience has been solid, unchanging, or true. And they need elders who will gently mentor them in the faith and its practice. They don’t need a certain approach or style, just the one thing needful: to sit at Jesus’ feet to receive His pure teaching (Lk 10:38-42) and His body and blood for the forgiveness of their sins. And those marks of the Church have always been our strengths naturally delivered in the Divine Service. Lean into Christ’s sturdy, time-tested means of salvation, for that is how Christ gives out His Gifts which have always created, fed, and sustained the Church.
My favourite Bible verse is Psalm 133:1, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brethren dwell together in unity.” I value harmony at home, in church, in relationships. The foundation of our unity is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But Luther teaches that the blessings of unity flow particularly when we all play our parts according to the stations and callings Jesus has placed on your life in the three realms of family, church, and state. When we take up our crosses and follow Him in each of those callings there is great blessing (Mt 16:24-26). We miss those blessings and create problems these days because we love to push into others’ callings, and busy ourselves with their business rather than our own. But we are all men under authority. And in the shadow of Christ’s cross is His blessing. North American society forgot that in the quest for individualism. But forgetting to stay within our own callings has set our younger generations adrift on the tides of secularism which hates our Lord’s natural law, hierarchy, and structure.
We are Christ’s Church, rooted in God’s Word, fed with Christ’s flesh, grafted into the living vine by Holy Baptism. We are the pillar and ground of truth (1 Timothy 3:15). We have the answers all men need. We have the foundation on which life is built (Ephesians 2:20). It unites us, and that unity is safeguarded and increased in this world through us faithfully living in the callings our Lord has given each of us. This doctrine of vocation is desperately needed today.
I pray that in the days ahead, with the challenges before us, we focus on the callings we are each given in each realm of life that we might be truly Together One and experience how good and pleasant life together can be. And according to your callings as the holy priesthood of God pray for me, and all those elected at this convention, that the challenges ahead of us may not overwhelm us, that trusting in the Lord of the Church He uses us all to face the times in which we live, for He has indeed brought each of us into the Kingdom for such a time as this.
The Lord be with you. Thank you.
