# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S230
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 229

It should be remembered that for fifteen years past the resident
enrollment at St. Louis has included a fourth year, which has been
primarily a collegiate year instead of a professional theological
year, while the Springfield enrollment reported here includes the
enrollment in two pretheological college years.

Since it is apparent that, in view of the recent upswing in the
synodical growth rate and the persistent and gradual increase in
parish vacancies, the annual production goal of 200 trained sem-
inary graduates which was generally acceptable six years ago no
longer is realistic as an adequate supply, Synod is confronted with
the new problem as to how an increased supply of trained seminary
graduates is to be provided for on the immediately preceding
seminary level of training.

This primary question has no simple answer. It involves con-
sidered and adequate answers to further questions, such as: What
is the optimum and the maximum size of seminary training units?
It has been the considered opinion of the Board for Higher Edu-
cation that the operation of a theological seminary with increas-
ingly large resident enrollments makes virtually impossible the
personal and individual contacts between devout Christian scholars
and leaders as teachers and students which is essential to sound
ministerial training.

However, a further question raises another dimension of the
problem. What is the case for and against a certain number of
theological seminaries? The history of the Christian Church and,
particularly, the history of much of theological education in the
Lutheran Church, both in Europe and in America, apart from
the history of our own Synod, seems to warn that the creation and
fostering of a series of theological seminaries in a church body
often becomes divisive in that church body’s ministry and before
long, in the church body itself.

The third question arises from a discussion of the desirable
nature of the training program itself. In contrast to the European
church situation from which they came, the leaders of The Lu-
theran Church — Missouri Synod established a so-called theo-
retical training program presupposing church control, both of the
seminary level of training and of the preparatory stages of train-
ing. At the same time and in the face of almost unbroken shortages
of trained ministers for the mission opportunities confronting the
church in the rapidly expanding United States and Canadian
areas, Synod established and maintained another type of program,
termed the practical program of ministerial training. These persist
to the present day in the form of the program culminating in the
St. Louis Seminary and the Springfield type of program. In terms
of the present situation and of the long-range needs of the church,