# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S650
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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SPR OREN RLS APH

650 MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS

Such a postwar program was a farsighted step on the part of
the Council; for as soon as the war with Germany had ended, im-
mediate enactment of most of these resolutions became imperative.

There has been one thought uppermost in all the relief work
carried out in Europe by the Emergency Planning Council: “To
strengthen that which remains and is ready to die.” Even though +
physical distress and political injustices direct attention because of
their immediacy, and even though a starving man must be given
bread to enable him to partake of the Bread and Water of Life, and
even though millions of dollars are spent for food, clothing, medi-
cines, and other necessities, it is our Church’s paramount purpose
to help rebuild the Church of Europe.

The Evangelical Free Church
The Emergency Planning Council at first centered its relief
work chiefly upon the immediate necessities of the Freikirche with
which our Church had been associated for many years before the
war. In a meeting in Germany, attended by Drs. J. W. Behnken
and L, Meyer and nineteen brethren of the Freikirche, it was de-
cided to send at once books, Bibles, ministerial gowns, Communion
sets, catechisms, Bible histories, hymnals, and $100,000 for general
relief. In later months other funds were sent. Such expenditures
were utilized for orphanages to house refugee children, for barracks
to replace burned or bombed-out churches, for temporary struc-
tures for a college and seminary and for the printing of Christian
literature.
All our work at the present time with the Evangelical Lu-
theran Free Church is emergency work. It is the expressed desire
of the Free Church, which was self-supporting during the war
years, to continue as a self-supporting independent church. The
same may be said of other church bodies, approximately eight,
which are planning the formation of an alliance with the Free
Church in order to become one united body. They, too, wish to
remain a self-supporting group and request physical and spiritual
relief only on the basis of emergency.

Breslau Synod
Another church body with which the Emergency Planning
Council has come in contact and to which have been contributed .
emergency funds is the Breslau Free Church. Originally this
Church had about eighty pastors and sixty thousand members.
Its constituency was located mostly in Silesia (Schlesien) and
Russian-occupied territory, but is totally dispersed today.
For many years there was little or no personal nor church .
relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of