# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1848_S49
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 49 —

Proposals of the Mission Commission.

Since it is in the first place this commission's duty to locate mission
stations and, where possible, to found them by means of mission colonies,
it has in the past year directed its chief attention to this, and after a
mission in the Oregon territory was privately proposed by its Präses
[president], it took this plan under mature consideration. Persuaded by
reasons it will set out below, it lays the plan before the synod so that the
synod may make it its own and set to work on its execution as soon as
possible. The preliminary plan is:

The synod, through its Mission Commission, should call a competent
candidate of theology, or else an experienced preacher who would be able
to free himself from his present calling. He should at first best be
stationed in St. Louis, in order to begin his work from there in two
directions. First, he would have to apply all diligence to dealing with
Indian chiefs who occasionally come here from there, and to forming
friendly relations — indeed, where possible, to bringing it about that he
secure a friendly reception with at least one band, or at least to
reconnoiter the field far enough that one could provisionally determine in
which direction mission work might suitably be directed, without coming
into conflict with missions already established there. But then he would
also have to recruit a mission colony, in part perhaps from Germany, with
which he, as mission preacher, would settle at some central point in
Oregon, perhaps in or around Oregon City, in order to send from there a
missionary, who would stand at his side, into the midst of the heathen,
while he himself would apply all diligence to setting up and beginning, in
the meantime, a school for heathen children. That he would also have the
duty of entering into lively contact with the friends of missions here and
in the old fatherland, to win them for the care and furtherance of this
mission, including through necessary financial contributions, is obvious.

The reasons for a mission in Oregon, rather than among Indian tribes
situated nearer at hand, are:

a. the by far greater and more assured field of activity that will foreseeably
open to us there;

b. the, given this country's politics, extremely uncertain continuance of
mission stations situated nearer at hand;

c. the comparatively lesser demoralization and enfeeblement of the Indian
tribes there.

Note: The Mission Commission does not by this mean the Indians living
nearer at hand to be disregarded in any way; rather, it earnestly urges all
members of the synodical district who, through their local circumstances,
are in a position to come into contact with Indians, to seek to gain
entrance among them where possible, and, should a door thereby open, to
inform the commission of it, so that it may, according to the findings, take
care to provide them with a missionary.

The next reasons for forming a mission colony would be:

1. the urgent necessity of influencing the heathen, alongside the Word,
through a shining walk of life, especially in church fellowship, and thereby,
under God's gracious help, of countering the ruinous impression...