# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S170
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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170 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

to pass on the recommendations which are being made by this
study group through the Board of Directors.

In June 1958, ten years will be past since the Board for Higher
Education first prepared growth studies and attempted long-range
forecasts. In the light of the many involved changes which have
characterized the last decade of Synod and its schools, your Board
for Higher Education proposes to continue its annual check and
to prepare comprehensive, revised forecasts for report to the 1959
convention, along with recommendations as to how best Synod’s
growing needs for pastors and teachers can be accommodated.

SECTION B

Student Recruitment for the Church Professions

Between Palm Sunday and Pentecost in 1956, the 5,130
organized congregations of The Lutheran Church — Missouri
Synod will have confirmed about 18,000 boys and 16,000 girls.
While some congregations will have confirmed none at all this
year and others will have confirmed many more juniors than the
average, the average congregation in Synod can be said to have
confirmed an average class of six.

On the other hand, from September 1956 through Septem-
ber 1960, the colleges of The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod
from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Texas must
enroll four out of every hundred of these confirmands of 1956
(or almost 1,400 of these boys and girls), if merely the number of
young men and women presently studying for the church pro-
fessions is to be maintained and if the places occupied last school
year by graduates and students placed into full-time service in
the churches and parishes in May 1956 are to be occupied.

But the record of the studies of synodical growth in recent
years is clear on two items: In every single year of the last fifteen,
the Synod-wide demand for pastors and teachers in each suc-
ceeding year has been greater than it was the year before. In the
last eight years the communicant membership of the church, to
mention one demand-creating factor only, has been growing at
a still faster rate than in the previous period.

That means that of these 34,000 boys and girls many more
than the mere replacement number of about 1,400 must be recruited
and subsequently trained. How many more is one of the key prob-
lems in the current planning and work of Synod as a service to
its member churches.

But the problem is more than a mere question of statistics
or of sheer numbers. The Christian Church in any age and place
has an insatiable need for faith-filled and faithful trained leaders

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