# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S174
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

——t-

174 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

in their own right. The tradition of a learned ministry is to be
maintained as a high calling in a “cosmos of callings.”

The result can be a sharp tension between the call and the
professional training program. The tension is present in the indi-
vidual who convinces himself and seeks to convince others that
his own deep sense of being personally called is the sole warrant
that he needs for the exercise of the Gospel ministry. It is found
in those who would minimize the demands of a rigorous profes-
sional training program as somehow being detrimental to the per-
sistence and nurture of a sense of calling. They prefer not to act
on, if they actually remember, the ancient principle that “God does
not call those who are fit, but He fits those whom He calls.”

The tension between the calling and the professional training
program is a necessary and a wholesome tension, for it is a constant
reminder of both the possibilities and the limitations of training.
For when it comes to the calling and training of qualified church
workers, it is necessary for the church to avoid both the anti-
intellectual extreme, which maintains that training can do nothing,
and the fallacy of Erasmus, which tends to hold that training and
education can do everything.

Another factor in the quest for talented recruits which is
affected by the nature of the ministry itself relates to the general
need for pastors and teachers to serve in the parishes and, par-
ticularly in this day and age, a variety of specialization pressures.
Priorities in recruitment and training are claimed for such
ministries as military and institutional chaplaincies, church editors,
instructors for the church’s own training institutions, as well as
for Christian schools on the secondary and collegiate level, man-
agers and administrators of church organizations and agencies, as
well as full-time executives of Synod and its Districts.

Not the least of the factors to be mentioned in this connection
is the degree of attraction of the church professions for those who
are likely recruits. This is measurable to some extent by the way
in which the ministry is held in esteem, honor, and love; as well
as in the way in which those who have dedicated themselves to

‘ the holy ministry in the church receive temporal and material
Ltewards for their services.

Group Factors Affecting Student Recruitment for the Ministry

In response to the assignment of the Houston Convention,
your Board has given careful consideration to a variety of factors
affecting the supply-and-demand situation for pastors and teachers
in Synod. Beginning effort can be reported, one of which is an
approach to determining to what extent each of our North Ameri-
can Districts in the last three years has been providing Synod’s

ots a nent tetninei

Saline Ieaemtalinemtanmmememnnetnas teeeriteeee caer ae eS

Table 2—
and St

Atlant
Califor
Centrz
Centr:
Colora
Easter
Englis
Florid:
Towa J
Towa '
Kansa:
Michig
Minne
Monta
North
North
North:
North:
North
Oklah:
South
South
Southe
Souther
South
South:
South:
Texas
Weste
Canad

Total

institutio:
number |
by the ca
each syn
dents re}
a certain
colleges

respectiv
Board in
it is app
afford to
relations!
be useful
even by

‘ing circu
contrasti