# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S73
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Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 73

serve in the best way, and to serve precisely as they must be served
under the circumstances and conditions set forth above. Just as it
would be foolish if, at the present time, we wanted to train preachers
and teachers who were not masters of English, so it would be premature
if we wanted, say, to set up special institutions in order to train English
preachers as distinct from German-speaking ones. The people who now
grow up out of our educational institutions are precisely the sort of
people we must have now, and in the future to a still greater extent, in
order to meet the solution of the language question in the best way.
If we thus preach, and have others preach, in German and English
wherever God gives us hearers, then God will also give his blessing to
his word, in German and in English; then, as long as we live, we shall
not lack material out of which Lutheran congregations can be built up
and extended in this country as well.

"If, however, God gives his blessing to such bilingual work as is
already now being carried on to a great extent within our Synod, and
especially if, through the progress of our mission activity, congregations
arise corresponding to that activity — that is, German congregations
and German-English and English-German congregations or parishes,
here and there perhaps also wholly English or largely predominantly
English congregations — then such a blessing will force upon us the
question of what we are to do with it in our church household, how we
are to incorporate or attach these congregations into our synodical
body." (Report of the Commission for the English Mission.)

Furthermore, the Synod had before it a petition drawn up by the
president of the English Missouri Synod, Pastor F. Kügele, which was
likewise read aloud. This petition pointed out that, contrary to the
agreement reached in 1887, a congregation had been received at the
last convention of the Western District of our Synod whose pastor was
a member of the English Missouri Synod. In the debate that arose
over this matter, it was on the one hand argued that the Western
District's reception of that congregation had not violated the said 1887
agreement, since the latter did not forbid our Synod to receive
individual still-independent English Lutheran congregations or pastors
into its synodical fellowship — the agreement, it was said, concerned
only a body of congregations seeking reception as a separate district —
yet on the other hand it was thought one had to admit that the
reception of that congregation was nonetheless a violation of the sense
and intent of the agreement, or rather that the agreement also forbade
the reception of individual English Lutheran congregations and
pastors. It was added that there was a special resolution, first adopted
by the Iowa District and then later by the General