# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S649
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 649

.,, survey in 1942 indicated that this shift of population had a three-
« way effect on our congregational constituency:
eae" a. Congregations lost as high as sixty per cent of their resident
membership. b. Congregations increased up to 300 per cent.
c. Congregations experienced an internal change of membership as
high as 40 per cent, moving in and moving out.

War Workers
fe The question for the Emergency Planning Council to meet was:
“ow can the moving Lutheran be kept with his Church?”
There was no single answer to this important question. Only
.. after the united efforts on the part of hundreds of pastors were
expended; District mission boards, the Walther League, the Lu-
.. theran Laymen’s League, seminaries, colleges, Lutheran Women’s
’ Missionary League called into co-operation; hundreds of thou-
_ sands of dollars allocated; and trailer missions inaugurated — was
a semblance of any solution found for this difficult problem.

P.O. W.

Ever alert and aggressive to mission opportunities, the Emer-
gency Planning Council created also a separate Committee for
Prisoners of War. At the height of this program, 450,000 prisoners
in seventy-five P. O. W. camps were served on a comity basis with
the National Lutheran Council.

' Relationship with American Section Lutheran World Convention
Prior to the end of the war, the representative of our Church
approached the American Section Lutheran World Convention with
. the suggestion that the work of relief, reconstruction, and rehabili-
tation in war-torn areas be co-ordinated, and wherever possible, it
be done in co-operation with the A.S.L.W.C. Our suggestion met
with approval. A joint committee was appointed, and plans were
projected for co-operation in all such projects as were mutually
agreed upon. Some of these have been activated.

Postwar Planning

As rumors of peace became more widespread and a likelihood
for such rumors to materialize more evident, the Council turned
its attention primarily towards postwar planning. It concentrated
its outlook chiefly on five objectives: 1. A greater mission ex-
pansion program. 2. A personal evangelism move among our church
members. 3. Re-integrating the returning soldier into congrega~-
tional life. 4. Mission expansion, particularly in China, India, and
Latin America. 5. A long-range program of physical and spiritual
reconstruction in Europe, particularly in the land which gave birth
to the Reformation.