# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S116
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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116 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

per cent, the percentage of growth of the Oregon- Washington
District during this same period was 118.28 per cent.
During the years from 1940 to 1946 the following rate of growth
is indicated:
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946

Synod .—- _ 1.67% 1.66% 61% 2.54% 2.82% 2.12%
Oreg. and Wash. Dist. 2.94% 4.49% 4.46% 10.77% 10.04% 5.20% 8.82%

It is significant in the above to note the accelerated. rate of
growth during the postwar year of 1946, which indicates that the
increase in the membership of our District was not simply a war-
time phenomenon, but that it rather possesses the elements of
stability and constancy.

It should be noted, moreover, that Oakland, which is the
nearest of Synod’s junior colleges, is 719 miles distant from Port-
land, 901 miles from Seattle, 1,081 miles from Spokane. Whereas
our students travel an average of 145 miles from their homes to
Portland, they would have to travel an average of 757 miles to
Oakland.

In 1944 Synod resolved to retain Portland in its family of
preparatory schools. The primary purpose of such retention was
the continued training of young men for the Gospel ministry.
To this end an investment of more than $200,000 in new buildings
and more adequate facilities has been made at Portland since 1944.

Now, it is undeniable that the determination of mary — per-
haps most — young men to choose the ministry as their life’s work
is not crystallized before the first or second year of college. At the
same time it is incontrovertible that many of our high school grad-
uates who would have continued study at our institution if the
junior college years had been offered here have been lost to our
synodical educational system because of the difficulties presented
by the necessity of continuing their studies at another institution
excessively distant from their home. Thus the purpose of Synod
in continuing Portland’s Concordia as a pre-ministerial training
school has in part been vitiated by the fact that our course has
been cut off at the conclusion of the senior high school year.
It would therefore seem to be the part of both logic and good
stewardship to lend these students every possible encouragement
and to facilitate the continuation of their pre-ministerial studies by
offering them the junior college years on their own campus. Only
in this way can Synod and the Oregon and Washington District
capitalize fully on their investment in our Portland Concordia.

It should further be observed that now, for the first time in
the history of our institution, there will be adequate dormitory and