# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1887_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1887. 83

§ 6. Each district declares itself obligated and ready, should the
occasion arise, to help support members of other districts as well.

§ 7. This makes it necessary that the General Synod, too, appoint a
Support Committee.

§ 8. This committee, like the district support committee, shall
consist of three members who live near one another, and shall be elected
at the same time and in the same manner as the other officers of the
General Synod.

§ 9. The district committees are to turn to this General Committee
and give it notice whenever need should arise within a district.

§ 10. It is the duty of the General Committee to confer with the
district committees four times a year, and to even out the disparity
among the districts by means of the existing surpluses from the
district support funds, or through special collections.

§ 11. The General Committee is to render account to the Delegate
Synod at its sessions.

II.

§ 1. Where the matter concerns support for congregations in need of
help, only such shall receive consideration as are

a) mission congregations in larger cities, where, for the sake of
the importance of the mission field, a larger church is needed than the
congregation can provide from its own resources; — or which

b) have, in separations undertaken for the sake of confessional
faithfulness, lost their church property and are not able, without
outside help, to acquire a new one; — and which

c) have been visited by extraordinary calamities, such as fire,
flood, storm, and the like.

§ 2. In order to manage the support of such congregations in a
suitable way, there shall be a standing committee for the General Synod,
namely the same one which the General Synod has established regarding
support for poor, sick, and infirm-with-age pastors as well as poor
widows and orphans of pastors and teachers (see Part I, § 8); this one
committee, however, shall keep the two funds separate and administer
them separately. For each district, though, only in a case that arises
shall a committee, likewise consisting of only three persons, be
appointed by the district president.

§ 3. If a congregation finds itself in genuine need (see § 1 a, b,
and c) and requires support from outside, it shall turn to the district
president, and through him place its request for support in the hands
of the district committee to be appointed by him.