# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S843
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

senate liaceaieaetireineriie iene inataiaieiiaaaiaiaa

144 , SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

can simply add a senior college and leave the present system 4
undisturbed. However, if the continued growth indicated by the 4
projections is accepted in principle, then Synod has no choice but !
to act now or to accept the alternative of declining to prepare for 4
a situation of which it has clear advance indications. 3

Since Synod is agreed that a full college education should 4
become a part of our ministerial training program, the primary
remaining question is: Do we accept the implications of the
projected growth studies?

If, ESTIMATES OF PARISH MINISTERS REQUIRED
FROM 1950 TO 1980

One of the most striking and inspiring facts about the Missouri “4
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 ..g
twenty-five years ago. God not only increased our membership :
from a little over a half million to more than a million commit
nicants in twenty-five years, but He also administered this Te-
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 ber cent each year. God has, ins
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; wt

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

4, More and more students must be accommodated in our edus ©
cational system;

4

2
%