# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1953_S1032
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

ur vacation Bibl]
Nent of 150,000 Schools

repr
on-member children gon

ol, th

the last t ° 4 e
een 650 and a4 Mibommn
, g

© was 691, which

PARISH EDUCATION 978

‘rei are some signs of renewed interest in the Saturday
In advocating the promotion and support of the Saturday
e following arguments can be advanced: it affords time
éensive instruction —up to three hours for every class ses-
e.is available for instruction in Bible history, doctrine
-hymnology, liturgics, etc.; furthermore, time is available
‘a effective use of pictures and other modern helps.
a here can be no doubt that the Saturday school can be a help-
ful addition to the educational program of a congregation; there-
fore, more congregations, especially those that do not have a
ia] school, should give serious thought to the establishing '
of a Saturday school and to providing for its promotion and support.
“Uncertainty exists with respect to the place and the curriculum
of the Saturday school among our agencies of religious instruction,
and clarification would be helpful. In the previous convention of
«04 the Board for Parish Education was asked to explore the
needs of the Saturday school, but, unfortunately, time was not
available to give worth-while attention to Synod’s resolution.

- Released-Time Classes. — As in the case of the Saturday school,
so also with respect to released-time work we have suffered loss
in the number of schools. However, there has not been a com-
parable loss in the total number of children enrolled and in the

-pumber of non-member children included in the enrollment, as

the following statistics reveal:

Non-Member
Year Schools Enrollment Ohildren
1948 CB 17,548 5,646
1949 05 18,407 5,184
19590 TE 13,998 4,194
1951 4B 14,458 4,264

An explanation of the situation may be that the impact of the
adverse court ruling in the McCollum case was not felt until 1950;
however, there seems to be no good reason at the present time for
a continued decrease in the number of schools: In fact, recent
court rulings, including the Supreme Court ruling on the program
of released-time classes in New York, have been favorable for the
continuation of released-time instruction and the establishing of
classes in: more areas.

Since released-time work has made it possible to reach many
of our own children and many non-member children for instruction
in the Word of God, extant classes should continue to{function,
and new classes should be introduced where it is possible to do so.

E. Confirmation Instruction
The Board for Parish Education still has on its program of work
the development of-a manual on Confirmation instruction that will ©
give assistance in this important field.