# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S169
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 169

In the third column are reported the estimated number of
communicants for each group of congregations, not by actual cen-
sus count but by reasonably reliable estimate, while the fourth
column shows the percentage of the total membership. In 1953
the large number of congregations with quite small communicant
membership included more than 467,000 communicants, or almost
36% of Synod’s total communicant membership. The second group
included approximately 394,000 communicants, who formed slightly
more than 30% of Synod’s total communicant membership. How-
ever, the smallest number of congregations, but. with the largest
individual size, included 34%, or about 444,000 of Synod’s total
communicant membership. Synod’s total communicant member-
ship is thus divided by sizes of congregations into three approxi-
mately equal groups.

Columns 5 and 6 report the distribution of parish pastors in
service in 1953 according to the same congregational groupings.

A comparison of columns 3 and 4, 5 and 6 points to the very
startling relationship whereby in 1953 about two thirds of our
pastors in the one case were serving about one third of our com-
municants gathered in about three fourths of our congregations.
In the middle group, a few more than 20% of our pastors were
serving slightly in excess of 30% of our communicants; and in
the final subgroup, 13% of our pastors were serving another third
of our communicants.

The final column shows the ratio of pastors per communicant
member in each of these congregational groupings. The first group
shows the. ratio of 175 communicants per pastor on the average;
the second group, 482 communicants per pastor on the average;
and the third group, containing one third of our communicants,
845 communicants per pastor.

This type of analysis is more revealing than the simple calcu-
lation of the communicant membership per pastor for Synod as
a whole. Any exploration and discussion of the problems of the
most effective use of the trained manpower available to Synod
and its congregations in the near or distant future must reckon
with such important questions of pastoral relationship.

Your Board for Higher Education participated in the “man-
power studies” initiated in April 1955 by Synod’s Board of Direc-
tors, as the latter Board has sought to bring together the necessary
data to fulfill its responsibility of developing and submitting to
Synod broad and comprehensive plans of synodical work and
finance. Results of these studies, confined to the problems of the
decade immediately ahead, are being separately reported to Synod.
The convention will have an opportunity to review the findings and