# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S452
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

452 CONSTITUTIONAL MATTERS

equipment in order to be of service. In the accomplishment of
that task we have frequently run into difficult problems that
cannot remain unsolved. So that our Department may become
efficient and up to date, certain alterations should be made and
progressive steps taken in the future.

New Outlets

For one, we should have our own service outlets which are
operated directly from the St.Louis office. These new outlets
would be able to offer congregations in various parts of the
country a complete service covering films and equipment. Some
twenty or thirty such outlets is our goal, and we are anxiously
looking forward to the time when most Districts of our Church
may be served in this manner. The additional advantages to new
outlets would be that such synodically owned and operated agencies
would eventually become self-supporting.

Direct Contact with Producers

In the future our Department should also be qualified to set
up personal contacts with the leading film producers. Past, sporadic
contacts have shown that in most instances, producers, especially
those of religious films, welcome guidance and assistance towards
a better understanding of our Church policies. If systematic
contacts are made and time as well as funds provided for this
purpose, many religious productions can be produced in such
a manner as to be usable also in our circles. This, in turn, would
give us an additional supply of film as well as better teaching tools.

New Films

The most ideal way, of course, is to produce religious instruc-
tional films of our own. This is not always possible, particularly
not if present prices remain what they are today. But in the future
much more should be done along this line, in order to insure for
our Church such visual education tools of which we need have no
fear and which can be shown wherever we please without any
proviso. We have done advance work along those lines and have
made tentative plans for a series of teaching films integrated into
our Sunday school lesson plans. The two-year Sunday School
Course covers approximately 85 Bible stories that have not as
yet been touched by any producer. If the making of such films
should be set into motion, our Church would be one of the first
to have an integrated Sunday school program calling for ten to
twenty minute sound and motion picture films with each lesson.

Naturally such a progressive project would require con-
siderable expenditures on our part. Yet with proper distribution of