our office constantly brings us into association with this large outer
fringe of our congregations at times when their hearts are responsive to
anything that we may have to say. We meet them at weddings and at
funerals. We baptize their children and we bury their dead. Once in a
while some of them even come to church. In spite of all their wanderings
and intellectual idiosyncrasies they still claim to be Christians. And
whatever their own attitude toward Christianity may be, there are few
who do not desire to have their children brought up in the Christian
faith. We have before us an open door.

The churches can do more than they are doing now to win these lapsed
Lutherans. Some people are kept out of church through no fault of their
own. For example, the rented pew system, still in vogue in some
congregations, is an effective means of barring out visitors. Few care
to force themselves into the precincts of a private club even if it
bears the name of a church.

A pecuniary method of effecting friendly relations is not without its
merits. In this city of frequent removals there are many families who
have lost all connection with the congregation to which they claim to
belong. An opportunity to contribute to the church of their new
neighborhood might be for them a secondary means of grace. They become
as it were proselytes of the gate. Having taken the first step, many may
again enter into full communion with the church.

A Lutheran church, however, does not forget the warning of the prophet:
"They have healed the hurt of my daughter slightly." The evangelization
of this great army of lapsed Lutherans is not to be accomplished by such
a simple expedient as taking up a collection. What most of them need is
a return to the faith. Somebody must guide them.

For this no societies or new ecclesiastical machinery will be required.
The force to do this work is already enlisted in the communicant
membership of our one hundred and fifty organized congregations. We have
approximately 60,000 communicants. These are our under-shepherds whose
business it is to aid the pastor in searching for "the lost sheep of the
house of Israel." Shall we not have a concerted effort on the part of
all the churches?

We may certainly win back again into our communion many of whom the Good
Shepherd was speaking when He said: "them also I must bring and they
shall hear my voice, and they shall become one flock, one shepherd."

To accomplish suc