# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S157
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

O. The human experience of the Church has disclosed that
. the following additional qualifications are at least highly desirable:

1, A keen knowledge of human nature, of individual differ-
ences, and of the social, physical, psychological, and bio-
logical forces which condition the natures and the behavior
of individuals and groups.

2. The possession of personal traits — intellectual, social, cul-
tural, and physical— which facilitate. his preaching and
teaching.

3. An understanding, in historical perspective, of the heritage,
the structure, the functioning, the practices, the developed
means, and the destiny of that external organization —
the visible Church — within which and through which the
minister necessarily works.

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 157
f

P, Learning the truth; learning deeply to live according to
the truth; learning about men; acquiring the habits, the skills,
and the attitudes of a competent minister; and comprehending
the functional development of his Church constitute a process
which is the particular education of the minister. It is the process
3 in which he, affected by the demands of his pursuits, experiences
- the progressively effectual interaction of his awareness of the com- .
a plete relevance of God’s will and truth to everything, the love- (i
motivation to apply God’s will and truth to all of the experiences hi
of life, and the growing knowledge about life.

Q. Conceivably, a portion of the education of the Christian a
minister can take place more effectively in a school than else-~ iH
where. Whatever the extent of that portion may be, its aim must 1
be to provide the prospective minister with equipment which will
be useful to him chiefly in that portion of the process of learning
to do the will of God which takes place beyond the school under |
the conditioning influence of the minister’s pursuits. That equip- |

- ment describes the objectives of the school. 4

R. An enumeration of the objectives of Synod’s pre~ministerial 1
and ministerial schools should reflect an acknowledgment also of “|
the following principles: i

1. The historic heresy of “work-righteousness” can become

sublimated under a kind of “doctrine-righteousness.”

2. Intellectualism and secularism persistently menace all
schools devoted to the training of the clergy. On the other i
hand, a disdain for scholarship may be equally dangerous. y

2 3. No Church in modern Christendom has avoided the slow i

but definite recession of its implementing means from the

real lives of the people who are its constituents.