# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   23

not inconsiderable shortfall that circumstances brought with them, it has
made not merely no step backward but decided progress, so that a net
profit of $141,000 could be achieved. Since the third English reader is
now also finished, and the completion of the whole series — and, we
hope, of the Bible histories as well — is not far off, we shall soon be able
to produce, in our own press, pretty much everything our congregations
need for church, school, and home. — On the motions put forward by the
board of directors [*Directorium*] we shall probably do best to decide as
soon as the report is read. The same applies to a motion from our
brothers in Germany. It concerns a new arrangement of our dealings in
the book trade and of the prices of our publications.

The report on our General Treasury will, it is true, because of the
large costs of our seminary and the still very small contributions to the
General Building Fund, not show as gratifying a balance as last time, but
neither will it show so alarming a synodical debt as some of us may
have feared. It comes, all told, to $19,000. The question will now be
how best to cover this deficit while also raising what is truly needed for
our budget. For it goes without saying that, having built so handsome a
building for one of our institutions, we must not leave the others in
painful want. Equally clear, however, will be the need for us now to
become truly careful in spending and truly diligent in contributing. Since
our dear congregations have just brought together such considerable
sums, it may almost sound ungrateful, but it must still be said: that we
allow ourselves to be roused now and then to enthusiasm for new and
large undertakings — that alone will not do. No, we must accustom
ourselves to giving regularly and generously, year in and year out, for
things that attract no great attention but are all the more necessary for
that. — As for the regulations set by the last synod for the management
of the treasury, I have, on the representation of the treasurer and the
board of directors, and with the advice of several businessmen, agreed
to take it upon my own responsibility that the resolution requiring the
treasurer to make his payments only by checks countersigned by the
president of the board of directors remain suspended, as nearly
unworkable and scarcely serving its purpose, until the present synod,
which will now itself have to make a final decision on it. That all the
other regulations have been faithfully kept will, I have no doubt, be put
beyond question by the report of the revision committee.

Home missions [*Innere Mission*], once the care of already
existing congregations is provided for, is without doubt the work to
which we are called before all others. Some 80 traveling preachers are
laboring at it. And here it would indeed be very desirable that a unified
direction of this work