# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fourth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1884.   65

and are not yet churchly cared for, the General Synod nevertheless
recognizes it as its duty to take up this work, wherever it is carried
on, as its own, and to encourage the individual district synods to be
zealous in it — not only those district synods already active in the
mission field, that they not grow weary, but also those which have no
opportunity to cultivate a mission field of their own, that they not
grow slack in vigorously supporting this work, wherever it is carried
on, through intercession and gifts of love.

    Resolved, that the 4th resolution among those concerning Inner
Mission, found in the 17th report of the General Synod of the year
1878, p. 53, be amended as follows: "The mission commissions of the
individual district synods shall henceforth be permitted to report to
the president of the General Mission Commission four times a year,
namely on January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1, so that the
funds needed for carrying on Inner Mission in their district may be
drawn from the general mission treasury promptly after the report is
made."

    Resolved, that in electing new members of the General Mission
Commission, care be taken that they do not already belong to a
special committee for Inner Mission, but rather that they be chosen
from a district that has no mission field of its own to cultivate. The
members to be elected to the general mission commission should also
live as near one another as possible.

    What had already been criticized on the occasion of the admission
of pastors into the Synod came up again here, and in particular
Pastor Sievers Jr., a member of the mission committee of the
Minnesota and Dakota District, complained of the frequent recall of
traveling preachers, which ruins Inner Mission.

    Resolved, that Dr. Walther be charged with bearing earnest
testimony in the "Lutheraner" against the aforementioned practice,
which is ruinous to the growth of the Kingdom of God.

    Thereupon Pastor Bühler of San Francisco, Cal., having been
asked to do so, discharged the commission he had received from the
pastoral conference there and for whose execution he had been
delegated to the Synod by his conference. In warm words he described
how, 24 years earlier, he had been sent to California as a mission
preacher and had found there a truly desolate ecclesiastical
wilderness. "At last a congregation arose in San Francisco, which
also recognized its missionary calling more and more as time went
on. Its prayer was not in vain. Help came, and the faithful God did
not withhold his blessing. In Los Angeles, in Orange, in Oakland, and
in Stockton the church