# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S874
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 177

& tion along these lines:

1. Although the Church has a tremendous investment (about
12 million dollars) in its 14 existing colleges and seminaries,
the physical plants are almost all so extremely small that to
meet these requirements, eight plants would have to be
expanded to almost double their present capacity. Actual
estimates convinced your Board that the capital investment
involved in such an operation is so large that it would take
approximately 20 years of the resultant operational-cost
savings to return the expense of the conversion. In addition,
five of the existing campuses and plants would have to be
abandoned as synodical educational operations if the Senior
College were to have a central location. This would have the
effect of contracting all of Synod’s educational activity into
the Midwest area. The strategic value of our East Coast,
West Coast, Southwestern, and Canadian schools would be
lost. (See Exhibit 1, page 153.)

2. A realistic appraisal of existing emotional factors certainly
indicates an overwhelming sentiment for the preservation of
what our Synod has developed during the past century.
When this traditional factor is coupled with the fact that this
plan would necessarily involve transfer, relocation, and re-
assignment of at least 75% of the present administrative and
teaching personnel, the overwhelming practical difficulty
as. well as the inadvisability of such a procedure will be
apparent.

3. It is a fact that most unusual opportunities for service and
for expansion of our Synod’s work are characteristic of the
outlook for the immediate future. Certainly this is true of
the area of foreign missions as these are represented in the
eight new fields which have been opened in the last decade
alone. Serious thought must be given also to the American
population increases, which are as tremendous as they are
unexpected. (150 million on November 1, 1949.) These
actual numerical expansions, coupled with the great popula-
tion shifts within our national boundaries, carry the most
profound implications for our work in home missions and for
the expansion of our parochial schools.

In this connection we note that this plan would normally
involve a shrinkage of our educational facilities in exactly
those areas where the greatest future national and synodical
expansion is indicated and where, by the grace of God, we
already have flourishing educational units.