# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_1969_S247
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

6. HIGHER EDUCATION

(6-01)
Report of Board for Higher Education

In grateful awareness of how manifestly the Lord
Jesus Christ has continued to use the colleges and sem-
inaries of The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod as
instruments of His goodness to His church, the Board
for Higher Education herewith joyfully presents its
biennial report.

In the 2 years following the New York convention,
more than 2,400 young men and women of considerable
competence and remarkable dedication will have grad-
uated from the schools of the Synod and entered into its
professional ministry.

Your board is therefore highly gratified to have had
a part in the carrying out of one of the basic purposes
and objectives for the existence of the Synod: “The
training of ministers and teachers for service in the
Evangelical Lutheran Church.” (Constitution, Art. III, 3)

Board Personnel

During the biennium several changes have occurred
in the personnel of the board. Dr. Richard Engebrecht
of New York City, assistant executive secretary of parish
education for the Atlantic District, Rev. A. Lorenz
Grumm, until recently the pastor of St. Paul’s Lutheran
Church of New Orleans and now the stewardship coun-
selor of the Synod, and Mr. Adolph Rittmueller, presi-
dent of the Rittmueller Lumber Company of Addison,
Ill., became members. Outgoing members, to whom an
exceptionally warm expression of commendation for
years of distinguished service is due, were Dr. Leonard
Heidemann, Mr. Donald A. Rosenberg, and Mr. Edwin
Meese Jr.

There were no official changes in the staff. Dr. Lester
R. Bayer, who had been appointed as an assistant exec-
utive secretary during the previous biennium, moved to
St. Louis upon the successful completion of his doctoral
program at the University of Texas and was installed
on Sept. 13, 1968. Mr. Delphin Schulz, an assistant exec-
utive secretary, was granted a sabbatical leave during
the 1968—69 school year to do graduate work at Saint
Louis University.

Meetings

The board met approximately once each month,
usually in Chicago, but also in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and
Springfield, for 2-day meetings. Pursuant to a resolution
of the New York convention, the board also traveled
to the West Coast to conduct another intensive investiga-
tion into the issues of synodical higher education in that
large and populous area. As a part of the study, hearings
were held on April 18, 1968, at Phoenix, Ariz., where the
Southern California District was in convention and where
it was therefore convenient for the officers of that Dis-
trict and the members of the board of control of the pro-
posed college at Irvine to meet with the Board for Higher
Education.

247

On succeeding days hearings were held at San Fran-
cisco. Meeting with the board there were officers and
representatives of the California and Nevada District,
California Concordia College of Oakland, Concordia Col-
lege of Portland, California Lutheran College of Thou-
sand Oaks, Pacific Lutheran University, and Pacific
Lutheran Theological Seminary. Also in attendance
were the board’s educational consultant, Dr. Paul L.
Dressel, assistant provost and director of institutional
research at Michigan State University, and Mr. Howard
Holcomb, assistant secretary for educational services
for the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A.

Twice each year the board also convened its advisory
council, consisting of the presidents of the colleges and
seminaries, for mutual consultation on issues of system-
wide concern.

Of further great assistance to the board has been
the work of its commissions, all of them consisting of
synodical school administrators and faculty members.
These are the commissions on curriculum, student life,
planning and research, and recruitment policies. Sub-
ject-area conferences have also involved a substantial
number of teaching faculty in the determination of many
curricular and administrative issues.

THE CONTEXT

As the board undertook all of its assigned tasks during
the past 2 years, whether these activities were opera-
tional and oriented toward the present or theoretical and
oriented to the future, it did so with an increasingly
sharp awareness of the context of all contemporary edu-
cational activity. The biennium represented days of such
radical change that drastic words like revolution, crisis,
and upheaval were casually fitted to them both by social
scientists and by the average citizen.

Educators became particularly conscious of these
revolutionary processes as students in schools through-
out the nation began to express forcefully the ideas and
feelings which had remained latent in previous student
generations. While the violent actions of some students
outraged the nation, other young people spoke more
quietly about the need for drastic changes in the struc-
tures of contemporary society if our national and per-
sonal ideals are actually to be realized. Although some
young revolutionaries demonstrated a frightening cyni-
cism and a life style offensive to large segments of the
population, far more sought the simpler privilege of
active participation in the administration of those institu-
tions in which they are now numerically so largely repre-
sented and which so drastically affect their lives and
futures.

Even more forcefully was the American nation re-
minded that in the relentless movement toward even
greater secularization, urbanization, and social mobility,
large and identifiable segments of our population have
been cruelly caught in the crunch. Existing institutions
experience great difficulty in serving the needs of the