# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S195
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 195

ivisi liberal arts program and that the senior col-
UPPer Ne nay be organized, is not to be confused with the
lees tof a university. In other words, the synodical senior college
oon be and remain wholly and exclusively an instrumentality of
will tion for admission to the theological seminary and, through
geal for entrance into the work of the holy ministry in The
Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod.

It will be perfectly clear that several additional years of train-
ing in subject matter can do little to improve the quality of our
ministerial training, for such additional schooling can only impart
information and skills while expanding the student’s mental ca-
pacity and maturity. The primary and lasting advantage, then,
which the Church may properly hope to gain from the additional
expense of operating the college and from the added time which
the student spends in training lies in the area of more highly de-
veloped spiritual strength and sensitivity.

It is conceivable that a consecrated man may serve his Lord
in the Church without a high degree of specialized intellectual
and technical accomplishment, but it is not true that satisfactory
service can be rendered without the requisite spiritual develop-
ment. Our theological seminaries should certainly demand, there-
fore, of all students who wish to enter these schools that they
possess, first of all, an adequate spiritual and a Satisfactory per-
sonality development. We are assuming, of course, the technical
and intellectual apparatus which is necessary for a high level of
professional production as an a-priori prerequisite for matricula-
tion at the seminaries.

The attainment of such spiritual objectives in the senior col-
lege will require a specific program which focuses particularly on
the extracurricular and co-curricular areas of activity. In a Lu-
theran college there is only one effective approach through which.
such a program may conceivably be expected to yield the desired
results: the regular and effective use ofthe means of grace.

It is perfectly true that an educational institution differs from
a local parish in that itis nota congregation in the Scriptural sense
of the word. The means of grace, however, are the distinctive Lu-
theran approach to the problem of the individual human soul and

, of course, the Word is paramount and

should be central in any program which is finally proposed and
adopted. :

It should be observed also, that to be distinctively Lutheran,