# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S227
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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226 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

fornia District; Rev. Arthur C. Nitz, President of the California
and Nevada District; Rev. Carl Bensene, President of the North-
west District; Rev. Oscar T. Walle, then president of California
Concordia College; Dr. Thomas Coates, president of Concordia
College, Portland; Prof. Ernest Scaer of the faculty of California
Concordia College, Oakland; Prof. Alfred J. Freitag, principal of
Lutheran High School in Los Angeles; Rev. Amos Schmidt, Port-
land, Oreg.; and Mr. Jay Pfotenhauer of San Francisco.

Individual committee members had prepared special studies in
advance of the meeting, including such matters as the population
trends in the entire West Coast area and in selected urban centers,
the growth in souls and communicants of Synod’s Districts in the
area, the present level of recruitment and of training of students
from the West Coast region for the pastorate and for the teaching
office in the church, and the growth trends of the Christian day
schools and of the Lutheran High School in Los Angeles.

This special committee advised the Board that the chief
urgency of the present moment is for the acquisition of land in
the face of spiraling costs of real estate and the dwindling oppor-
tunity to purchase adequate sites. On the basis of the preliminary
studies, as well as on the special discussion of the related prob-
lems, the group adopted the following resolution as its recom-
mendation:

“1. That The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod must imme-
diately take into consideration the necessity for the expansion
of professional education on a higher level on the West Coast
because of the tremendous growth in population and the still more
rapid growth in proportion to our church population; and that
it consider the possibility of a junior college in Southern Cali-
fornia and a terminal school in the San Francisco Bay area. (The
Committee came to feel that a very satisfactory arrangement might
be for a new junior college —freshman and sophomore college
years only —in Southern California to replace the present Oak-
land Concordia, provided that a terminal school could be developed
and established in the San Francisco Bay area; perhaps even, at
least temporarily, on the present Oakland campus.)

“2. That the acquisition of adequate sites for a junior college
in the Southern California area and for a terminal school in the
San Francisco Bay area calls for immediate action.

“3. That studies be inaugurated to determine what direction
this professional education on the West Coast should take in
relation to, and integrated with, the ministerial and teacher-
training program of Synod at existing institutions.”

As this report is in preparation, the Board for Higher Educa-
tion has had called to its attention a possible promising site in