# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S171
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 171

of the highest type. ‘The problem of student recruitment for the
church professions is part of the church’s quest for talented per-
sons who can be trained for competent service in the leadership
which Christ, the Head of the Church, has constituted for His
church.

There is the further question: Will the 1,400 or 1,900 or 2,400
or whatever number in the next decades actually do gain annual
admission to one of the synodical training stations for professional
church leadership — will these young Christians be among the
most promising of the entire group available to the church? Will
they, in fact, be as promising as the classes that have preceded
them? The answer to both questions can be simply reduced to
NO if their recruitment is left to chance.

President Nathan M. Pusey of Harvard, who is also president
of the Rockefeller Brothers Theological Fellowship Program,
recently was quoted as saying: “In recent years no church has
been attracting as much first-rate ability into its ministerial ranks
as it could profitably use.’ Your Board for Higher Education
would be remiss in its responsibility to Synod if it did not point
out that with our other stewardship privileges we have also this
stewardship of talented persons; and that while the need may be
more acutely felt at one time than in another, actually the task
is a continuing one.

What is the student recruitment task of the church? It is
fulfilling the gracious will of God for his church by the unified
and systematic recruitment of an adequate supply of the best
talent available to the church so as to provide superior training
for superior individuals who know themselves to be called as
competent professional leaders for the total mission of Christ’s
church in the world and to the world. The statement of purposes
in the synodical constitution is evidence that in its entire history
our Synod, in its service to the congregations, pastors, and teachers
who are its members, has been pointed to this vital goal and has
accepted the recruitment and training function.

Conditions in Society Affect Church Recruitment

The effectiveness of the church’s quest for talented persons
in terms of student recruitment for the church professions is
greatly affected by factors in and of our society.

Despite the rise of compulsory education and the spread of
secondary and college education, the best students are agreed that
there is still a very great waste: and loss of potential manpower,
even in the English-speaking countries of North America. Both
in World War II and later the Selective Service System has had
to reckon with a shamefully large number of draftees who, despite