# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S878
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 181

E sections, and the outstanding growth of the synodical Districts
. involved (1948 rank among North American Districts: California
; and Nevada 2, Southern California 3, Alberta and British Colum-
f bia 4, Northwest 5, Texas 13) make it unthinkable to recommend
E, any proposal to relinquish the tremendous advantages which belong

sto Synod by virtue of its holdings which were acquired from 23 to

70 years ago when the present tremendous developments could be
F only dimly foreseen. The U. S. Census Bureau recently reported

. that Oregon is now the fastest growing State in the Union. In nine

4 years the State’s population has increased 59.3% (to an estimated
E 1,736,000). California has gained 3,758,000 residents since 1940. It is

. now the second largest State in the Union. Texas is the most

E rapidly expanding industrialization in the United States. In the
light of these facts your Board simply cannot recommend either
contraction or elimination of Synod’s education projects in these
} areas. This appears, on the contrary, to be the time to strengthen
: the Church’s holdings in educational property and programs par-
ticularly in the areas mentioned, since in a special way these
colleges are in a position to function as:

1. Focal points of Church leadership.
2. Prominent physical symbols of the Church in a growing area.

3. Agencies for creating and sustaining group support con-
sciousness.

4. Centers of Christian education.

It is true that the same functions are performed, to a degree,
by all the synodical schools. The emphasis here is on the proposi-
tion that such functions are a particularly important factor in these
five schools. For these reasons, particularly, the school should do
something special for the region, and the region should do some-
thing special for the school.

On the basis of these fundamentally negative indications it
appears that it would be both wrong to advise and unrealistic to
attempt any reorganization which proposes to solve this problem
through the creation of a consolidation which would give Synod
its needed capacity in a smaller number of larger schools (and the
resultant economy of operation of the individual units), but which
is so expensive to convert from the current situation that 20 years
of operational savings would be required to recover the capital
investments demanded by the conversion and which would involve
the loss of five schools now strategically located in some of the most
promising and rapidly developing regions of our Church and nation.
For cost estimates on Plan A, see Exhibit 16, page 182.