# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S838
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 141

to Dr. A. C. Stellhorn’s estimates, only about 10 per cent of all fi

women teachers in our parochial schools today have received :

two years or more of formal training in Synod’s teachers’ colleges.

This is a shocking situation, which could eventually lead to a com-

plete fading out of the real objectives of our parochial schools.
The Board believes that we must prepare now to increase the |

production of professional workers. Our available data make it

perfectly clear that the Missouri Synod will continue to grow

unless either of two things happens: a) it disintegrates through

internal strife, b) it declines to do the work which lies before it

to do. Only a defeatist could assume that either of these possi-

bilities could become a reality. The only defensible assumption is

that the organization will hold together and that it will do its work.
Over the past 20 years, Synod’s communicant membership has

been increasing fairly uniformly at the rate of 2.42 per cent per

year. There is, of course, no absolute proof that this rate of increase

will continue in the future, but the only proper assumption is that

under the blessing of God a continued rate of increase not greatly

different from the rate of the last decades must be assumed as

a basis for our human planning.

Even without the well-established need for a higher level of
education for our ministry, this growth factor alone would make
it necessary to choose between an extensive expansion of the
present seminary facilities; the establishment of a third seminary;
or the alleviation of excessive crowding at St. Louis by establish-
ment of a senior college. The removal of the Graduate School and
the School of Missions from the physical plant of the present
campus would also have to be considered, since this last device,
plus the establishment of a senior college, would increase the
capacity of the St. Louis Seminary to turn out regular graduates
by 33% per cent.

Benefits to the Church

The proposed reorganization and the establishment of the
senior college should eventually bring many additional advantages
which are not immediately apparent:

1. There will be a new opportunity for greater emphasis on the
primary requirement of greater spiritual maturity as a con-
comitant.of the mental and physical growth which should
result from the program. -

2. At the high school level our future professional workers will
have an opportunity to secure broader general education
than they have under existing conditions, which require
that extremely large portions of their high school work be
devoted to the study of professional languages.