# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S251
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

250 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

The year 1920 is chosen as the starting or base year because
it represents one of the earliest years in which reasonably complete
reporting of property evaluation was made for Synod’s congrega-~
tions generally. The total annual valuation has been rounded off
to the nearest thousand, as has the annual increase or decrease.
Since in the middle of the Great Depression, namely, in the year
1934, the reported valuation reached its lowest point, after which,
except for one brief decline at the close of World War I, when
church building was halted, the valuation has steadily mounted,
1934 is used as a secondary base year for the calculation of annual
per cent of increase in the most recent period.

For purposes of ready inspection, Chart D has been prepared
to show the figures of the table in connected form.

For those who are attending their first synodical convention it
may be important to point out that most of Synod’s present system
of schools began as private or congregational or District ventures
and soon, at least partly because of recurring and capital costs, were
turned over to Synod and from then on became a synodical respon-
sibility. Why this is historically true is readily apparent when one
recalls that in 1846, the year before Synod was founded, Dr. C. F.
W. Walther first printed in Der Lutheraner the constitutional pro-
Posal for the embryonic synod that every pastor and teacher of
Synod should be bound to pay at least one dollar ($1.00) each year
into the synodical treasury, to be used for the running expenses of
Synod and for synodical institutions. In 1899, this annual levy on
the pastors and teachers of the church was doubled.

During the years of the recent Great Depression, repeated
efforts were made to close certain synodical institutions in response
to the strong opinion that significant savings “in operational costs
and in capital costs might somehow be achieved if the number of
synodical educational institutions could be reduced.” Successive
synodical conventions declined to close any institutions. One,
namely Conover, came to an untimely end because of a destructive
fire and has not been reopened to this day.

The centrality of explicit and defined objective and proper
function has not consistently or comprehensively formed the in-
dispensable first step in planning and establishing all of Synod’s
existing institutions. As a result, few, if any, campuses provided all
necessary plant or equipment. As recently as 1947, Synod adopted
a policy statement establishing gymnasiums and physical educa-
tional facilities as a desirable adjunct of Synod’s institutional plants
and as proper objects of synodical capital and operating funds. The
first decade of Synod’s second century has been the first in Synod’s
history to see the planning and implementation of adequate library
facilities on an increasing number of campuses. Only recently has

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