For years, I have prayed that God would grant a Christian revival to our nation. When I added this prayer to our family devotions, I was thinking of my children, how I wanted them to grow up in a Christian culture with good laws and neighbors who loved them. I was thinking of the unborn children killed by abortion and the collapse of the American family.

Of course, I was thinking of heaven and how I want my fellow Americans to be saved. I was not thinking of the words attributed to the early church father Tertullian (d. 220 AD), “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” [Tertullian actually wrote, “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” (Apology, L)].

Yet, since Sept. 10, 2025, these words have crept into my memory as I pray. Indeed, God has watered His Church on earth with the blood of the saints He holds dear. For much of Church history, God’s modus operandi for church growth has been the persecution and martyrdom of Christians. We see this still today, as some of the most fertile mission fields for the Christian Church are where Christians suffer the most.

We’re also seeing it in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Satan blundered. Of all the political activists, Kirk was the most outspoken Christian. He frequently confessed his faith that Jesus is his Savior who died for his sins. He encouraged college students to go to church.

He also publicly confessed that his conservative views, while defensible from a non-religious standpoint, came from the convictions of his Christian faith. The reason he spoke out against transgenderism, which ultimately got him killed, was because of the biblical truth that God made mankind male and female (Gen. 1:27).

Just moments before he was assassinated, Kirk defended the historical resurrection of Jesus and confessed Christ’s divinity. When Charlie was murdered, millions of Americans began watching and sharing his videos. This means millions of people heard Charlie confess Christ as the Savior of sinners.

People began to post online that they planned to go to church, some for the first time in years, some for the first time ever. This was even before Charlie’s widow Erika, addressed the nation on Sept. 12, when she urged Americans to join a Bible-believing church. And pastors reported getting more visitors than usual to church on Sunday, Sept. 14. Many said they were there for Charlie.

Never in my lifetime has the Gospel of Jesus Christ been pushed so front and center in American thought. God gave America a martyr with which to seed her soil. Yet still people deny that Kirk was a martyr.

I do not just mean the Left, many of whom celebrated his murder, or the network media, which insinuated that he died on account of his inflammatory rhetoric, or even the non-Christian conservatives, who touted Charlie as a political martyr. I mean some Christians mock the idea that Charlie is a Christian martyr. Some did so because they could not bear to see the title of martyr given to someone they disagreed with. Others, because they believe the lies of the media without listening to Charlie and assumed that he was at best a political martyr.

But why does it matter that Kirk be identified as a Christian martyr? For two reasons. First, martyrs cause the church to grow, because their martyrdom makes their testimony more powerful.

When the Apostles and other early Christians died for their confession of Christ, it gave courage to the other Christians that their confession was worth dying for. It gave credence to Jesus’ words, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

If Christians do not recognize that Charlie Kirk is a Christian martyr, they water down the effects of his martyrdom. Then his death does not give them courage to confess Christ in the face of danger and death. They become oblivious to the attacks on Christ (Acts 9:4) and so, they fail to rejoice that they too share in His suffering (1 Peter 4:13). Neglecting to recognize the martyrdom of one of our brothers in Christ risks lulling us into a lukewarm faith, which Christ cannot abide (Revelation 3:16).

Second, the martyrdom of Christians testifies to the world that Christ is worth dying for. When Erika Kirk told Americans to join “a Bible-believing church,” she asserted what Charlie was willing to die for.

There are millions of lost souls in America. Many recognized that Charlie Kirk’s murder was not simply the death of a man, but a spiritual assault in a spiritual war between Good and Evil. They want to join the side of Good. They want to fight the Evil.

The widow of a man killed for the sake of the Good tells them they can find that Good in church. Yet, if churches are too timid to assert that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was Satan’s failed assault on Christ and His Church, that what Charlie Kirk died for is worth dying for, because Christ died for Charlie, then why would these lost souls want to go to those churches?

So, I wrote an overture to send to the 2026 convention of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), a steadfastly Bible-believing church body. The overture resolves, “that the Synod in convention give thanks to God for Charlie Kirk’s public confession of Christ Jesus as the only Savior of sinners; and … that the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod recognize Charles James Kirk as a Christian Martyr.”

I presented this overture at a forum of pastoral and lay delegates from several congregations in southeastern Iowa. It passed unanimously, and we hope our entire denomination will eventually follow suit. And we encourage more Christian congregations to join us, both in proclaiming the Gospel Kirk believed was worth dying for — that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross took away the sins of the world so that sinners who believe in Him may have everlasting life — and in affirming Kirk died in defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.