# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S176
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES
strated ability to send students to the synodical institutions and in
the nature and volume of their demand for the products of Synod’s
seminaries and teachers colleges at the time of annual placement.

A major group factor affecting recruitment is the parish
tradition. Individual congregations with a vital tradition of fur-
nishing pastors and teachers for the common benefit of the whole
synod have built up impressive records of a continuous stream of
youngsters enrolled in various institutions of the synodical system,
as well as an impressive array of sons and daughters of the con-
gregation now active in the Gospel ministry from one end of the
world to another. There are other congregations just as large,
just as old, just as blessed with recorded baptisms and junior
confirmations through many years, who have yet to send their first
son or daughter to any of the synodical colleges and seminaries as
an offering of gratitude for the Gospel ministry in their midst.
Age of congregations, or rather youth of congregations in years,
does not appear to be the favorable factor that one might expect.
Actually, on the basis of present evidence, one is led to wonder
whether the young congregation may not tend to be a deficient
recruitment source for church workers.

It is very difficult to measure the significance of the factor of
geographical origin of Synod’s training recruits. In schools of
higher learning generally, more than half of a student body is
usually expected to be enrolled from within a 50-mile radius of
the respective schools, By way of contrast, the special purpose
and the related drawing power of Synod’s institutions, even on
the lower levels of training, has often drawn students many hun-
dreds of miles, from many different states, and from different
synodical Districts. Can the Seographical areas of most rapid
church expansion be expected to furnish for training a supply of
students proportionate to their demand for trained graduates?

A church body which knows itself to be sent with the Gospel
to both the multitudes in the cities and also to the rural com-
munities must give more than passing attention to the rural-urban
differential in the source of its pastor and teacher recruits.
At present there is some indication that the congregations and
church schools of the cities are not furnishing a proportionate
number of their own youth to study for the church professions,
in comparison with the number of pastors and teachers that they
need and request. While rural youth in the United States generally
are less likely to attend college than urban youth, the rural com-
munities and the small towns have in the past furnished a favor-
able larger share of those who study at Synod’s colleges and
seminaries.

It has been axiomatic for centuries that the holy ministry has

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