# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S319
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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PARISH EDUCATION 319

League on other services to utilize the talents of senior citizens
for Christ and country.

(7) To strengthen the home, Christian Family Week (first to
second Sunday in May, inclusive) has been observed by more and
more of our churches. (390,000 copies of one Family Week tract
were ordered.) Each year specific suggestions have been prepared
and tracts issued: 1953, Succeeding in Marriage; 1954, Why Family
Worship? ; 1955, The Home for Christ; 1956, Youth Today — Parent
Tomorrow. The committee has prepared the scripts for Family
Worship Hour programs of Family Week.

(8) To give our churches and their leaders the necessary in-
sights and skills, and to acquaint them with the best materials
(books, tracts, films) in family-life education, a Synod-wide train-
ing program is now in progress. At nine regional workshops, 300
to 400 District leaders are being trained. These in turn will share
the program with all pastors, and with the pastors of each circuit
conduct a Family Life Institute. It is hoped to train 30,000 laymen
and women in this three-year program. Specific training will be
given according to needs:

(a) for pastors (counseling, family evangelism, visitation, ad-
ministration) ;

(b) for elders (assimilating new families, reclaiming weak
families, serving the aged, family worship) ;

(c) for educational workers (weaving family-life education
into the current teaching program, working with parents) ;

(d) for youth leaders (courtship, engagement, Christian mar-
riage, home-making, mixed marriages) ;

(e) for adult leaders (program planning for parents’ groups,
couples’ clubs, men’s: leagues, women’s societies).

Especially helpful in interpreting family-life education to our
church will be a 27-chapter book titled Helping Families, to ap-
pear in 1956, growing out of two workshops, one in River Forest
(1949) and one at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis (1955).

The churches that possess the Gospel have a great opportunity
and obligation in ministering to the new marriages contracted
each year (89 per cent solemnized by clergymen) and in helping
the parents of the 4,000,000 babies born each year in the United
States.

2. Research on Marriage and the Family

The Family Life Committee has devoted most of its time to
the study of marriage, divorce, and related matters, authorized by
Synod in 1947. Funds for this research project were granted in
1950. The study was developed under the direction of Rev. Paul G.