# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S780
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

780 CONVENTION MINUTES

- growth appears from statistics of parish schools, Sunday schools,
vacation Bible schools, and Bible classes.

India, our oldest field, appears closed to additional American
missionaries but is rapidly developing a self-governing church.
Driven out of Red China, our missionaries are busy in Hong Kong,
where eight missionaries, five women workers, and twenty native
missionaries will be needed by 1960. Our seminary in China is
training native workers. By 1965 more than twenty American mis-
sionaries and 25 native pastors will be needed in the Philippines.
Ten years hence New Guinea will call for 20 missionaries and four
women workers.

After reviewing graphically the manpower needs of Synod,
the President pointed out that this presentation is underlined by
the dire situation of the world and the fact that time is running
out. We must make the words of Jesus our own, “I must work
the work of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh
when no man can work.”

Dr. Paul Bretscher presented the first installment of his essay
on “Christian Education.” Christian education, he pointed out, is
not identical with religious education. It does not rest even in
part on the innate religiousness of men but brings to men the
mystery of God’s plan of salvation revealed in Christ. Its content
must be the revelation of Jesus as God-man and sole Redeemer
of men as well as the message Jesus brought to men, all of which
was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. Unlike modern secular
education it is not humanistic or man-centered; not evolutionary,
not pragmatic; applying the test of “the greatest good for the
greatest number.” Christian education regards man as a body-
soul being in whom is to be restored the image of God in which
he was created.

Rev. Birkner presented an overview of the resolutions per-
taining to Synod’s higher education system in the last six- years.
The liberal donations of the Conquest for Christ campaign made
possible physical improvement of educational plants. A senior
college was authorized at the last convention and some attention
given to other institutions. The present manpower shortage calls
for a new recruitment program, long range planning, and more
material gifts, for ministerial education is inter-related with our
missionary program.

The election for president showed that Dr. Behnken had been
elected for the eighth term. As a prayer for his guidance the as-
sembly arose and sang the hymn “Guide Me, O Thou Great
Jehovah.” In acknowledging the vote, Dr. Behnken said that he
had hoped to be relieved of the great responsibilities of the pres-