# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S244
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 243

SECTION F

Financial Management Principles for Synod’s Colleges
and Seminaries

The foregoing section of the report of the Board for Higher
Education to Synod on the capital investment requests on the
colleges and seminaries gives greater and more pointed emphasis
to the viewpoint expressed in the Board’s report to the Houston
Convention (Proceedings, p. 230):

“Every convention of Synod, during the last two decades, has
been confronted with requests for construction funds, but Synod
has always found itself, simultaneously, without any cash with
which to pay for replacements or new construction projects. It is
recognized, of course, that not every request can or should be
granted; nevertheless the requests which were before the last
convention and the requests which are before this convention are
ample evidence that no static stage may be expected in an
educational operation of this size involving, as it does, almost
300 buildings.”

At that time the Board for Higher Education recommended,
and Synod acted favorably upon the recommendation, “that a com-
mission with representation from the Board of Directors, from
Synod generally, and from the Board for Higher Education be
directed to study the capital investment problems related to the
maintenance and expansion of Synod’s educational institutions
and to make its recommendations on the establishment of a satis-
factory and desirable long-range policy to the next convention.”
It has been held that the simultaneous action of the Houston
Convention in providing for the establishment of a Survey and
Findings Committee largely superseded the working of this special
joint committee. Undoubtedly this convention will review the
reports, recommendations, and actions of the Survey and Findings
Committee with a view to establishment of at least an adequate
short-range policy and basis for practice.

Meanwhile, however, the manpower studies initiated by the
Board of Directors and reported separately to this convention, and
the parallel growth studies carried on by the Board for Higher
Education and included in part in an earlier section of this report,
both tend to two inescapable conclusions: (1) If God the Holy
Spirit continues to bless Synod in the future as He has in the
recent past, the demand for qualified pastors and teachers on the
part of the constituent congregations and of the new mission sta-
tions of Synod will neither stand still nor abate, but will steadily
increase; (2) In consequence thereof the training capacity of
Synod’s ministerial and teacher-training system must somehow be