# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S164
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

164 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

planning, organizing, and controlling. It is even more difficult to
induce many teachers to rise above their natural absorption in
and preoccupation with the subject matter of their ‘courses in
order to recognize teaching ends which often are more important
than the matter of the subject. Nor is it easy to contrive and apply
some of the techniques which the proposed objectives would require.

Yet, all of it is wholly within the realm of possibility, and
none of it is too difficult.

A serious attempt to make the objectives effective would
impose certain requirement upon administrators, teachers, cur-
ricula, equipment, and techniques.

1. Administrators

Of fundamental importance in the administration of Synod’s
schools would be a sharply focused concept of leadership in the
minds of school presidents. This concept would limit the function
of the president mainly to the indispensably important leadership
tasks of integrating, with the formally adopted institutional objec-
tives, the purposes of all persons engaged in the manipulation
of any conditioning factors which significantly influence the student;
of continually encouraging and stimulating those persons to par-
ticipate actively in the development and the use of effective means
and methods for the achievement of the objectives; and of main-
taining such a direct and cordial relationship with students and
graduates as to provide a continuous appraisal of the degree to
which all objectives are being achieved in them.

If this focused concept of leadership is to be formed, and
if it is to become a criterion of competence, it would seem that
certain conditions must be fulfilled.

a. The presidents must be relieved of and must then divest
themselves of all routine administrative burdens by the
delegation of responsibility and of authority to others,

b. The presidents must not only possess considerable personal
experience with ministerial work and problems, but by de-
liberate effort must exemplify in themselves those qualities
which are described by the new focalized institutional
objectives,

c. The presidents must maintain a broad perspective, not only
of the static, but also of the dynamic aspects of the life of
the Church and of the whole social panorama within which
the Church does its work; and this perspective must be
fashioned not only with an utterly Scriptural outlook but
also with an astutely discriminating appraisal of the values
of tradition, prejudice, and personal predilection.