"Thank God, today a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd" (Concordia Reader's Edition, 309).

If we today took our cue from the seven-year-old children of Luther's day, our ideas about what makes a church "healthy" or "successful" would be very different. It's not that we today would say that there is anything wrong with listening to Jesus or God's Word. We're very willing to admit that listening to Jesus is a very important part of what it means to be church.

But when you listen to Luther's seven-year-olds, there is nothing else. Listening to Jesus is all that they know. These seven-year-olds were not alone in thinking this way about the Church; with a little more sophistication, the much older confessors at Augsburg said exactly the same thing: "The Church is the congregation of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered"(CRE, 60).

What makes for a healthy, successful church? Jesus! The Gospel! The Sacraments! There is nothing else. Nothing is said about packed pews or overflowing offering plates. Luther's children know nothing of fame, nothing of wealth, by which to measure the success or failure, the sickness or healthiness of a church. They only know Jesus and that Jesus knows them. They know that Jesus has given them an eternal treasure, even though it is a treasure which you can't deposit at your local bank. (You really wouldn't want it there, anyway, because moth and rust can destroy even that which is tucked away in the most secure safe-deposit boxes.) What is more, when Jesus purchased and won you from all sin, from death, and from the power of the devil, He didn't stand at the counter with His wallet full of green, asking: "How much?" It wasn't with gold or silver but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death that He made you His own. Once again, we're talking about Jesus, the Gospel, and the Sacraments.

What is the Church all about? How do we measure healthiness or success in a congregation? Maybe the thing to do would be to step back and ask: Are we listening to Jesus? Is His Gospel purely taught in our midst? Are His Sacraments correctly administered according to His institution? And do we pray that it would be this way? Luther's seven-year-olds certainly did. When they prayed that God's Name would be kept holy, they were praying that God's Word would be taught among them in its truth and purity and that they as the children of God would also lead holy lives in accordance with it. When they prayed that God's kingdom would come, they were praying that Our heavenly Father would give them His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace they would believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.

I think that we today could learn a lot from Luther's seven-year-olds.

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