Thursday of Pentecost IV, A.D. 2025
July 10, 2025
Dear blessed saints in our Lord Jesus Christ,
As you gather for the LCMS Atlantic District convention, I pray that the joy that comes from Jesus Christ may fill your hearts and inspire your time together. I pray that the Holy Spirit guides your important decisions and your deliberations. I pray that God continues to bless the congregations in the Atlantic District as you shine the light of Christ in this dark world.
Your wonderful theme, “In This Hope We Were Saved” (Rom. 8:24) is one that aptly describes our confession. Throughout Romans Paul proclaims the hope that we have because we have been justified through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though we are all sinners, God has justified us freely by His grace through the redemption that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, whom God put forth as a propitiation for our sins. (Rom. 3:23–25). Indeed, the hope that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ sustains us in this life and gives us hope that on the last day Christ will raise me and all the dead and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.
As I think about your blessed district and your focus on mission and outreach, the words of Peter come to mind: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). May we all rejoice in the hope we have in Jesus and may we all share that hope with everyone.
Along with my greeting, I send you warm greetings from the LCMS First Vice-President Rev. Peter K. Lange and the LCMS Fifth Vice-President Rev. Christopher S. Esget. We will pray for your time together and look forward to working together with you for the sake of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Paul confesses later in Romans 8, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32). Indeed, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38–39).
May the love of Christ fill you with hope and may this hope guide your time together.
In Christ Jesus,
Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
