# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S1244
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

762 FINANCIAL MATTERS

Missions ___..._______....-_-.__.._ $ 1,678,126.94
Education 312,219.06

Buildings _. a ~  4,101,781.53
Relief 2 .  5,283,576.19
Miscellaneous _ 119,116.80

Total  $11,494,820.52

(The above extra-budget total does not include the sum of approxj-
mately $25,000,000 expended through non-synodical channels for relief
in war-torn areas nor hundreds of thousands of dollars given by our
people directly — not through congregational, District, or synodical chan-
nels — for charitable purposes within and without Synod.)

3. These $11,500,000 extra-synodical budget expenditures are

of paramount significance to our world-wide Kingdom work, for

a. With a few exceptions, these funds made possible the accept-
ance of specially urgent opportunities to serve our God in
areas not provided for in the synodical budget;

b. They provided for either essential expenditures for the
normal expansion of existing mission work, or they made
possible an answer to emergency cries from all parts of the
world to “come over and help us”;

c. Through the availability of these moneys our work has
enjoyed, under the blessing of God, a greater forward move-
ment than in any comparable period in the one hundred
years’ history of the Missouri Synod. These funds provided
grants for at least some of the urgent requests for special
projects and made it possible for the Missouri Synod to
enter the second century of its existence with an unprece-
dented impetus for Kingdom work throughout the world.
To gain a full appreciation of what this has meant to our
world-wide missions, it is but necessary to contemplate the
status of our work today if there had been no funds available
for these unforeseen and emergency needs in Europe, Africa,
South America, Central America, Mexico, the Canal Zone,
Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, China, India, foreign broad-
casts, the tremendous volume of relief, and, last but not
least, in our home mission fields and in the building program
for our educational institutions in North America.

‘4, Most assuredly we of the Missouri Synod have no valid
reason to believe that the years in the immediate future will offer
less urgent or fewer opportunities in all parts of the world than
have the years of the immediate past. We can confidently expect
from God that He will continue to give the same and ever greater
opportunities for Kingdom building to us in this next triennium.

5. During these past years our people have willingly and
cheerfully given more than most of us, in our little faith, expected

them to give. If anyone had had the temerity in 1946 to predict
‘that within the next four years our people would give almost as

FINANCIAL MATTERS

763

much for extra-budget purposes (for budget purposes $12,000,000 —
for extra-budget purposes $11,500,000), he would have been labeled
a dreamer. And please bear in mind, the above total does not
include the twenty-five million given for relief.

6. We furthermore know that God continues today to give our
people more than sufficient material and spiritual capital to main-
tain and to accelerate our expanding Kingdom work.

7. It is furthermore in total harmony with our faith, prayers,
and experience that we can expect from God an ever greater
measure of the grace of giving in the coming years.

8. Thus, taking all factors into consideration and projecting
ourselves into the next triennium, we know that a large sum of
money will be necessary (over and above a normal increase in
the synodical budget from year to year) to meet even only the
most urgent of those many obligations which will continue to
devolve upon our Synod as a chosen people for Kingdom work.

9. The problem is: to bring the need into the consciousness of
everyone whom God expects to help meet that need.

10. With the help of God this can be done. No one has any
doubt of this. Everyone will agree that if we can put the story to
our people, our people will respond gladly.

11. Therefore the question is not whether or not it should be
done, but how to do it.

12. An ever larger group of our laity is expecting a real chal-
lenge for Kingdom work from the leaders of the Church. One of
the growing demands of our laity is that we draw it closer into
the work and delegate to it more responsibility.

13. The time is propitious for the inauguration, during the next
triennium, of a lay movement which will have as its goal the col-
lection of a Ten Million Dollar Mission and Education Fund.

14. God expects our Church to go to His people — and straight-
way we shall find the funds. We need to loose them and bring
them to our Lord. “And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall
say, ‘The Lord hath need of them.’”

15. Keenly conscious that our Church looks to its chosen
officers, especially the Praesidium and the synodical Board of
Directors, to blaze an ever widening trail in an ever increasing
forward tempo in these latter days; and

motivated by the command of our Lord and Savior “to go and
preach”; and