# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S842
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES | 145

5. Our educational system must have the capacity to accom-
modate these students;

6. Our members and our congregations must be willing to
supply the students and to furnish the means to train them
under adequate standards of educational effectiveness.

- If we do not wish to commit ourselves to the achievement of
E: these conditions, we cannot, on the other hand, escape the neces-
y. sity of choosing one of two totally untenable alternatives — either
E. to decide not to do the will of God, or to doubt the promises of
| God that His Word does bear fruit and that He will be with us
i. in the future as He has been in the past.

‘ As we look to the future, we dare not assumie any unwilling-
% ness to extend the preaching of the Gospel, not only in foreign
(. lands, but also with unabated zeal in our own land and continent.

* Who shall say that the fearful social struggles in which the world

_.is gripped today are not also a challenge from God to His Church
Militant?

4 - Quite obviously, the first practical problem to which our at-
. ‘tention must now be turned is the problem of estimating the num-
}. ber of seminary graduates we shall require over, let us say, the
. next decades from 1950 to 1980, to furnish us with enough pastors
5 to do the work which needs to be done.

% To be sure, the work which needs to be done in ‘our own
. country alone is almost unlimited. Not all of it can be done by
; the Missouri Synod. But God has made it abundantly clear to
= us that we can do an increasingly substantial part of the work.
;. We need, therefore, to estimate as carefully as human limitations

F permit, how much of His work we can and must do in the next

" thirty years. Since the chief measurable effect of doing God’s
: work is increased membership, we can arrive at an index of what
f we need to do by estimating our possible growth in communicant
membership, at least in North America, over the period from 1950
F to 1980. From such an estimate we may then form a tentative
estimate of all of the other essential factors—the number of
; pastors who should be in service, the number of seminary grad-
f uates needed, the number of students who should be enrolled in

;. our colleges and seminaries, and finally the institutional capacity

f which may be required.

A Thirty-Year Forecast
‘ Your Board undertook the somewhat formidable task of fore-
; casting the probable growth of our Synod from 1950 to 1980, and
: on the basis of this forecast undertook also to estimate the num-

4 ber of ministerial graduates which may be needed during the
f three decades from 1950 to 1980.