# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S297
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

296 PARISH EDUCATION

and fall meetings. District boards, District officials, and others,
almost 400 leaders, are on the mailing list. This is to insure the
widest possible use of planned programs.

Information Bulletins. — The Board has been publishing bulle-
tins for many years. They provide the reader with information
on many phases of the educational program in the parish. The fol-
lowing. have been prepared for the improvement of the Sunday
school: Organizing the Nursery Roll, More and Better Sunday
School Workers, Evangelism Through the Sunday School, Improv-
ing Sunday School Teachers’ Meetings. We might mention also
the bulletin Making the Most of Sunday School Associations and
the folder Training Workers for the Sunday School (description
of the training courses).

The Sunday School Standard

What is being achieved in the 4,800 Sunday schools of our
church? Are they well organized? Are the leaders and the teachers
competent? Are the teachers being trained for their work? Is the
educational program sound? Are planned mission endeavors for
soul-winning and soul-accounting being carried on systematically?
Are the plants adequate, and do they operate with proper equip-
ment? Are vital home-and-church relations being developed?

God’s standards of good stewardship and church work call for
more than the mere existence of a certain number of Sunday
schools with a certain number of workers and pupils. God wants
no less than the very best Sunday schools that our churches are
able to conduct. And our love of God, our dedication to His work,
motivated by His love in giving us His only Son to save us, should
make us want to have the very best Sunday schools that our
churches can have.

The purpose of studying the individual Sunday school is to
detect weak spots in order to aim at improvements. It can be
said without reservation that there are no perfect Sunday schools,
neither in the Missouri Synod nor out of it. A measuring device,
often called a standard, presents a list of the features considered
desirable in the Sunday school. A standard enables a local Sunday
school staff or board of education to check their school from every
angle and thereby to discover and consider what is right and
what is wrong with it.

Recognizing the need for an instrument that would be accepted
and used generally, the Board for Parish Education appointed
a committee to develop a synodical standard with which to measure
our Sunday schools. The committee’s preliminary standard was
submitted to the 1955 Educational Conference, which reviewed it

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