# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S231
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

230 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

what now is the desirable relationship between the Springfield
type of program and the junior college-senior college-St. Louis
type of program?

Another related question involves the relationship between
the seminary level of training and the far-flung frontiers of the
church’s most active home mission work. Could, for example, the
development of a West Coast seminary contribute intrinsically to
both the stability and the vigor of an aggressive missionary expan-
sion program in that area of missionary outreach and thrust?

There are no easy answers to these complex and weighty
questions. For the immediate future, two factors give time for
reflection before a decision must be made. The opening of the
Senior College in the 1957—58 school year means that temporary
capacity relief is available for the St. Louis Seminary until the
first students of Concordia Senior College in Fort Wayne apply
for entrance at Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Louis in
the fall of 1959. Furthermore, the elimination of the first (col-
legiate) year at the St. Louis Seminary and the increased capacity
of Concordia Senior College to an optimum of 450 students over
the initial proposal of limiting its optimum capacity to 380 students
means that in order to supply the church’s needs, larger graduating
classes from St. Louis are an emergency possibility for a few years.

If decisive action must be taken by the beginning of the
1962—63 school year, it is necessary for Synod to have an oppor-
tunity to reach considered conclusions in 1959. Your Board for
Higher Education accordingly recommends:

That it be authorized to investigate the problems and possi-
bilities of adjusting the synodical program of ministeral training
in such a way as to increase the supply of available trained men
without sacrificing the qualitative standards and objectives which
Synod has established for the general welfare of the church.

Graduate Training at Synod’s Terminal Schools

At the instruction of the Houston Convention, the Board for
Higher Education participated with representatives of Synod’s
four terminal schools in a consideration of the problems and pros-
pects of providing for graduate study at Synod’s terminal schools.
The St. Louis Seminary for many years has had a synodically
supported and authorized program of graduate studies. The School
for Graduate Studies has recently been reorganized for better
service to the church.

It is clear that our Synod must give increasing attention to
the provision of opportunities for advanced training in selected
fields to some of its pastors and teachers. Many of them: need