# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S71
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 71

congregations, which was however in decline and probably, had it
confined itself to German services, would today no longer be able to
support a pastor and teacher, has in a short time been so strengthened,
chiefly by the introduction of English services alongside the German
ones, that it is now able not only to maintain a flourishing parish
school, but has also had to build a church to make room for the
considerably strengthened congregation. Of the 17 confirmands of this
congregation this year, four received confirmation instruction to
greater advantage in German and 13 in English. Yet no one thereby
thinks of discontinuing the German services. Likewise in another of
our congregations in the same district, the possibility of the continued
existence of a parish school with a parish schoolteacher has probably
been secured only by the fact that, alongside the German services, the
German congregation has also introduced regular English services. In
still other congregations, where the introduction of English services is
at present still firmly rejected, the pastors complain that they find it
hard to make themselves understood to some children in confirmation
instruction without resorting to English. Others find from experience
that confirmands, to whom they have with much effort taught the
German catechism, within a short time give, at confession registration
[Beichtanmeldung], the distressing proof that they no longer have their
catechism in memory and can express themselves neither in German
nor in English about the simplest spiritual matters. Whoever observes
our German parish schools, not only in the cities but also in the
country, will find that the everyday language of our schoolchildren is
predominantly, indeed, where they are left to themselves, often
exclusively, English, and how matters stand with the language question
in our German families we all know. In addition, the personal contact
of our young people who have outgrown school with English speakers
is today far more extensive than before, and this contact in turn has its
effect back upon the German families, while on the other hand it can
also often become, and does become, the occasion for our young men
and women to bring English-speaking acquaintances into their church
and services, as soon as the language spoken there is also one they
understand.

"By all this it is by no means meant to say that our German
church life, which God has so richly blessed in fifty years, will shortly
come to ruin, that in our services the German language will soon fall
silent and only English will be heard. A language is not something
that tends to be set aside within a short time, and people who through
years of practice are accustomed to singing and praying in German will
for the most part not give up their German services as long as they
can keep them and have no particular reason to seek out English
services. Also in the case of the