In his February 2018 Keynote Address delivered to the Lutheran Society for Missiology, District President Robert Newton observed the LCMS is at the most critical time in her history:
“Our church body is right at a fork in the road where she chooses to walk with the mission of God, faithfully, or she chooses not just to ignore it, but, I would say, to reject it. That’s where we sit as a church body at this time.”