# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S357
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S WORK 357

Resolved, That Synod express its gratitude to the Board for
Young People’s Work, to the Walther League Executive Board and
its staff, and to the Youth Survey Committee, for all their fine
efforts in conserving Christian youth for Christ.

Report of the Student Service Commission
(Report 423)

The expanding concerns of the Student Service Commission
constitute the burden of our department's triennial report to the
43d convention of The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod in
St. Paul, Minn., June 20—30, 1956.

A cursory examination of these concerns will promptly suggest
the desirability of a change in the name of our commission from
its currently restricted student emphasis to a general name more
descriptive of the Student Service Commission’s total campus work.

Improving the Climate

Several years ago our Commission was privileged to join forces
with influential campus personalities and agencies concerned with
religion in higher education toward creating an improved climate
for religion on American (U. S. and Canadian) college campuses
where secularism had run its devastating course. We thus became
involved in high-level conferences concerning the relationship of
church and state, the recognition and place of religion in the state
university, and religious pluralism as an integral part of our
American culture. From these summit conferences emerged a new
mood, which asserts that “values are as important as facts —
indeed that spiritual values are the most important facts .. -” and
that the university must have a “concern for the vitality of religion,
both as a body of knowledge - - - and as a way of life to be pas-
sionately lived.”

There is also a concern for the Christian witness of the college
teacher. It is now considered intellectually respectable for the
college teacher to deal with the religious meanings in his field.
In fact, to avoid it or to be silent about it is not merely considered
cheating one’s students; it is regarded as bad teaching.

This concern for religion also finds expression in university
counseling service. Professional campus counselors recognize
religion as a vital tool for the solution of specific problems and
happily make referrals to church representatives on the campus
who have indicated a measure of competence in this area.

Another outstanding outcome of these conferences is the
gradual restoration of a basic American principle — buried by the