# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S168
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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168 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

Chart B shows the trend of Synod’s growth record in com-
municant members. While Chart A shows the amount of annual
change, the use of Chart B makes it possible to show the annual
rate of change. Nevertheless it is obvious that the trend line
scarcely differs from the actual-growth line. Since the definition
of communicant membership seems to be more standardized in
the reports, Chart B restricts itself to the presentation of the
growth trend of communicant membership for this period only.

Chart C illustrates graphically the marked difference that
the apparent slight increase in annual growth rate from 2.38%
up to 1947 and 2.84% annually since 1947 can mean for Synod’s
communicant membership at five-year intervals up to 1980. This
projection of the two most recent trends in Synod’s communicant
growth to 1980 shows part of the problem involved in planning
now and providing now for the recruitment and training of an
adequate supply of qualified future pastors to serve an additional
communicant membership of more than a third of a million, in
addition to the provision of pastors to replace those leaving the
service of the congregations.

While Charts A, B, and C have dealt with quantitative con-
siderations only, Table 1 is an illustration of how quantitative
measures must lead to the raising of important questions of quality
of ministerial services available to the congregations of Synod
at a given time. Table 1 shows the distribution of Synod’s com-
municant membership and of its pastors in three size groups of
congregations in the year 1953. In the first two columns Synod’s
congregations in North America are divided into those whose
communicant membership ranges from 1 to 299 and of which there
were 3,607. In the next line are indicated the 840 congregations
who in that year had a communicant membership ranging from
300 to 599; and in the third line are indicated those 445 congrega-
tions whose communicant membership in that year ranged upward
from 600 to include the very largest congregations in the Synod.

Table 1— Distribution of Communicant Members and of Pastors over
Three Size Groups of Congregations in 1953

3 Be ge 8 g
38 EFI BS 3 Sie | 68g

Size of Congregation Be zg 38 i § 7 gs 8
in Number of ae 3° 2s or] 8238 $3
Com. Members §& ad a gg sae js
28 g 8 5 8 a a3 g 3

gS a

1—299 ___——— 3,607 467,242 35.8% 2,670 66.5% 175
300—599 _..=srs—s 840 394,000 30.2% 817 20.4% 482
600 and over __.._ 445 444,410 34.0% 526 13.0% 845

Totals _____-__ 4892 1,305,752 100.0% 4,013 99.9%

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