# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S893
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISSIONS 893

tivated their own assemblies in their local parish mission houses.
They sought, if possible, to have their children confirmed by pas-
tors who were members of the Gospel Society. They regarded
the State Church as a necessary evil. The students of theology
who lived together in the student home provided for them by the
Gospel Society’ sought contact with other orthodox Lutherans in

‘various parts of the world. Through the medium of Esperanto

correspondence between Pastor Hansen of the Missouri Synod and
one of their pastors they discovered that there were other Lu-
therans in the world who also accepted the Bible and the Lutheran
Confessions. After one of their leaders had visited the Saxon
Free Church in Germany, after two of the theological candidates
had spent a year at our Seminary in St. Louis, and after they had
been visited by Dr. Willkomm and Pastor Michael, Sr., of the
Saxon Free Church, they were confronted with the necessity of
deciding whether or not the time had come for them to sever their
relationship with the Finnish State Church. After longer negotia-
tions with members of the Gospel Society seven pastors and about
500 lay members of the Gospel Society separated their connection
with the Society and the State Church. That was the origin of the
Lutheran Free Church of Finland.

Present STATus

At present the Lutheran Free Church is composed of three
pastors, 344 souls, 242 communicants. There are 7 congregations
with a total of 128 families, scattered over 52 localities and .
31 preaching places. This figure represents an increase of 5 souls
and 25 communicants in the last year.

One of the difficulties of the Free Church is the fact that its
members live in such widely scattered places. Among the localities
where members of the Free Church live, there are 23 in which only
a single member is found. This makes the task of the three pas-
tors an almost impossible one unless they can manage to serve
these members by printed material sent through the mail. For
this reason your Board has purchased and sent to Finland equip-
ment for a mimeograph service, by means of which it is hoped that
these members can be more adequately taken care of.

During the war years the Free Church was of necessity self-
supporting, since it was cut off from all subsidy on the part of our
Synod. This could be done only at the cost of permitting the
pastors to work at secular occupations. Since the salary scale
adopted by the Board has been put into operation, two of the
pastors have now given up their secular occupation, and the third
one will have done so at the end of May, when his contract ex-
pires. With the three pastors again working full time, we can
look for larger growth and more activity.