# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S122
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

118 SEMINARIES AND

fessional or vocational aptitu

mediately ahead. That is the real

for every phase of the proposed reorganization. It should be the
basic criterion in any appraisal of the entire plan and of the.

individual proposals. ©

The Primary Question

The comprehensive study which follows reflects your Board's
response to Synod’s resolution to “establish a senior college as
an additional unit in the professional training of ministerial
students” and to the directive that the Board “continue its study

to determine a satisfactory location

as its organization, curriculum, and plant requirements” and
submit these preliminary plans together with its recommendations §

to the synodical convention of 1950.

Having accepted this mandate to raise the standards of minis.
terial training, the Board’s extensive and prayerful exploration
of the problem led to the firm conviction that Synod is faced at.
this time with an equally compelling problem in the production
of ministers and teachers if she is to do no more than to continue

her work under the same measure

upon it during the past 25 years. Note well, that the Board does

may be used (and are now being used).

When all or any of these outcomes are achieved, we believe that
we shall have materially improved our Church’s capacity to teach
the full counsel of God effectively in the period which lies im. .

COLLEGES

educational institutions an opportunity to more accurataly
estimate the .professional capacities of those who apply fo
training, and would lend increased validity to any pro.”

de predictability tests whic

and the ultimate motivation

for the senior college as well

of blessing which has rested.

not even take into account the possibility of greater blessings, but:

speaks only of a continuation of the rate of growth which has
been Synod’s actual experience during the past 25 years. :
In addition to the mandate which calls for higher quality:

standards through the establishment of a senior college, your:

Board is forced to recognize also that a primary consideration in
every reorganization recommendation must be the realization that:
Synod will urgently require. a sharp increase in the production of:
ministerial and teacher training candidates if she is to be able,

to carry forward her work between

Basic to this conviction are the synodical growth and future.
need studies which follow in Sections II and III. of this report.
If the fundamental conclusion (not the actual numerical outcomes):J
illustrated by these statistics is rejected, then it is not necessay

to consider the internal reorganizat

1960 and 1980.

ion proposed. In that case we

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 119

can simply add a senior college and leave the present system
andi urbed. However, if the continued growth indicated by the
projections is accepted in principle, then Synod has no choice but
to act now or to accept the alternative of declining to prepare for
a situation of which it has clear advance indications.

Since Synod is agreed that a full college education should
become 2 part of our ministerial training program, the primary
remaining question is: Do we accept the implications of the
projected growth studies?

J. ESTIMATES OF PARISH MINISTERS REQUIRED
FROM 1950 TO 1980

One of the most striking and inspiring facts about the Missouri
Synod is the phenomenal growth of its membership during the
past quarter of a century. So wonderfully has God blessed our
work and our workers that today the communicant membership
in North America alone is nearly twice as large as it was just
twenty-five years ago. God not only increased our membership
from a little over a half million to more than a million commu-
nicants in twenty-five years, but He also administered this re-
markable blessing with astonishing regularity in all of those years.
Unaffected by a serious and prolonged depression and undisturbed
by a terrible war, God enabled us to grow at an almost constant
rate of nearly two and one-half per cent each year. God has, in-
deed, made us a dynamic, growing, developing, expanding society
of Christian men and women!

This prolonged and impressive experience with the generosity
of God must provoke in all of us a deep and humble gratitude
for which there can be no other expression so fittingly demon-
strative as unremitting continuation in the work which God “has
given us to do. ;

But against the bright background of our stirring growth in
numbers there. must now be projected a sober appraisal .of our
capacity and our willingness to continue, in the future, to do the
work which God wills us to do in His vast vineyard of souls..

Clearly, if our Synod is to continue this growth in the future,
the following series of conditions certainly must be satisfied:

1. The Word must be preached to more and more people;

2. There must be more and more persons who can preach the
Word and do the work of the ministry;

3. More and more men must be graduated from our seminaries;

4. More and more students must be accommodated in our edu-
cational system;