# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S803
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

CONVENTION MINUTES 801

tion of the Sunday School by Mail and called upon its pastors and
people to refer names of children who cannot attend a regular
Sunday school to District or National Mission headquarters
(TB:44, 11). Congregations were called upon to identify themselves
with Synod’s TV program. The Evangelism Department is to pro-
vide for following up correspondence contacts. Telemission should
be a laymen’s project as much as possible (TB:45, 12).

Under the direction of Committee 11, the Council of Lutheran
Agencies presented reports of the different agencies. Valparaiso
University, whose assets have grown to over $10,000,000, has found
a great blessing in the constant challenge produced by the steady
increase in student enrollment, which has grown from 300 in 1925
to 2,200 in 1956. 950 applicants have been admitted for next year.
The proposed chapel will stand in the center of the campus, a sym-
bol of the fact that the Gospel of Christ should dominate the
university’s life and thought.

Taking a cue from the women who served the Lord in Christ’s
day and the apostles’ days, the Lutheran Deaconess Association
enrolls young women for training at Valparaiso to prepare them
for service in parishes, institutions of mercy, and mission fields.
One graduate deaconess is becoming a mission teacher in New
Guinea, another, a missionary nurse in our Mohammedan mission
in India. Work on-the new Deaconess Hall will, God willing, be
begun this summer.

The American Lutheran Publicity Bureau has since 1914 helped
congregations publicize their church and its teachings by means
of the free Gospel-tract program, National Sunday School Week,
National Lutheran Publicity Week, Reformation week, the Easter-
to-Pentecost church-attendance week. Especially its Sharing-
Christ Plan has brought remarkable blessings to many congre-
gations. It is expected that the activities of 1956 will double those
of 1954.

Three agencies for defective children are the Mill Neck Manor
School for the Deaf, the Bethesda Home for mentally retarded
and feeble-minded, and the Lutheran Institute for the Deaf in
Detroit. Mill Neck Manor School has an enrollment of 80 pupils
and is accredited by the State of New York. The school receives
some support from the State of New York, and parents pay tui-
tion according to their ability. At Bethesda, schoolwork begins
on a preschool level and ends in confirmation for those who are
able to examine themselves to partake worthily of the Holy Sac-
rament. A full-time chaplain supervises the religious work and
conducts devotions. A manual-arts building is being erected from
the funds received from the “Building for Christ” collection and
the anticipated donations from other member Synods of the Synod-