# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S179
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 179

selves to be called irresistibly to the church’s work. Yet the best
evidence indicates that the crucial period for recruitment and the
most opportune time in which to begin training coincides with
the adolescent years. Particular periods of intensity may vary
from individual to individual from the early years of adolescence
to the late years of adolescence.

The call to the calling is almost always a mediated call; only
most exceptionally is it a direct and immediate call. The call to
the calling is almost always in the nature of a growing conviction.
It may have very tentative and very uncertain beginnings. It is
nurtured best by a training program with singleness of purpose,
in which the means of grace and every proper human means are
employed in intensification and maturation of purpose with
resultant growth.

Next to the prayerful, purposeful guidance of dedicated
parents, with the occasional assistance of influential adults, one
of the most important general factors bearing on our recruitment
is the effective presence of contagious professional examples.
These are furnished to impressionable youngsters by individual
pastors and teachers who are joyful and competent in their min-
istry. If the person and work of any occupant of the ministerial
office were deservedly repulsive to God’s people, such an occupant
of the ministerial office would not likely be instrumental in recruit-
ing qualified students for the ministry, even in protest. Perhaps
equally dangerous to effective recruitment is the pastor or teacher
who by his indifference turns casual stirrings of interest away.
He also neglects to act on the principle that one of the most
important functions of one who is privileged to exercise a pro-
fession is to duplicate himself many times over. We have been
blessed with many a pastor or teacher who in years of service has
been active in identifying, motivating, stimulating, and sending
a steady stream of youngsters to the church’s training schools. On
the other hand, other pastors and teachers have gone from one
congregation to another but seem never to have been successful
in being directly instrumental in sending any youngster as a pos-
sible successor to themselves into the holy ministry of the church.

Any attempt to list the major group factors affecting recruit-
ment for the church professions cannot afford to ignore the matter
of the selection of helpmeets by those who are to be pastors and
teachers in the church. It has been said that the education of
youngsters begins when their parents are born. Then it is not too
early, even under the heading of recruitment, to speak of the
matching problem of recruiting those who will select or have
selected proper helpmeets in the high tradition of the Lutheran
parsonage and teacherage.