Exhibit M

(Plenary VII)

MINORITY REPORT OF THE PHILOSOPHY AND PURPOSE COMMITTEE

            It is the conviction of a minority of the Committee on philosophy and purpose that it is necessary to disagree with the statements of goals and with the current understanding of the statement of purpose prepared by the Committee.

            Our concern touches two areas.  First, these statements confuse our understanding of the nature of the Church; and, second, these statements do not arise inevitably from our Lutheran confession of the Christian faith, as we imply they do when we call ourselves a Lutheran student movement.

            In our confessions, we find again and again that Lutherans have thought of the Church as “the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel;” “the assembly of saints who truly believe the Gospel of Christ and who have the Holy Spirit;” “an association of faith and of the Holy Spirit in men’s hearts;” etc.

            We judge from these that a Lutheran student movement is the Church in a very real way, for we say that we students have come together as Lutherans, which is to say, again, as part of the “assembly of saints who truly believe the Gospel of Christ and who have the Holy Spirit.”  We have said that this is sufficient to identify the Church; {The Church} “consists of the Word of God and true faith.”  May we describe further what kind of community this body, The Church, this gathering of Lutheran Christians enjoys?  It is the community of faith and a community in no other necessary sense.  Can we then determine what will be the concern of this community as The Church?  It seems that we must say the concern of the community of faith is the state of the souls of all men, whether within or without the community.  The two statements mentioned above are not expressions of this concern but in many particulars are statements of concerns that we as members of other communities might adopt.

            Second, we disagree that these goals and purposes (apart from whatever value they may have) emerge necessarily from a Lutheran stance.  Why do Lutherans do these things as Lutherans?  We are, of course, free to do these in the same way that the Apology of the Augsburg Confession agrees that [Christ’s Kingdom] “lets us make outward use of the legitimate political ordinances of the nation in which we live, just as it lets us make use of medicine or architecture, food or drink or air.”  We Lutherans may indeed act upon some of these goals, because we are impelled by the implications for us of our faith, but we do this as secular men, as citizens of the world, just as other Christians and non-Christians act on these goals for their own reasons.  To say that we do these things only incidentally or only insofar as they depart from their faith in the direction of Lutheran Christianity.

This is obviously false from observation.  It is also to imply some Lutherans lack some of the understanding of what it means to be Lutheran, for how else could they disagree with these goals which we say we adopt because we are Lutheran.

            What then do we do as Lutheran students?  We proclaim the Gospel of Christ’s resurrection and death for all men.  We proclaim the necessity of this act of pure love.  And if it be said that this proclamation ignores the major concern of contemporary students, we must realize that this proclamation has always ignored the major concern of all people, in order to tell them, out of our love for them what their major concern ought to be---to know that Jesus the Christ has indeed brought them back to the Father.