# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Tenth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1902. 79

"3. Great would be the advantages flowing from such a close
synodical union.

"a. Among the business of a synod belong, according to Chapter I, § 3
of the synodical constitution: 'the joint spread of the Kingdom of God
and the enabling and furthering of particular ecclesiastical purposes
(seminary, Agenda [liturgical order], hymnal, etc.).' Now if the Germans
and the English each have their own synod, both must establish and
maintain teaching institutions and publishing houses. While on the one
hand this arrangement will have to be expanded at ever new cost, on the
other hand the already established, costly household [of the other synod]
will keep emptying out more and more. And while the income for the
emptying household (teaching institutions and publishing house) will
naturally decline, the costs of administration and operation will for a
good while longer remain the same. All this will result in a grand waste
of the material means that God has given His Church not for that
purpose, but for the most advantageous use possible in building the
Kingdom of God. With a close synodical union of the Germans and the
English, this disadvantage would be avoided and turned into an
advantage.

"b. According to Chapter I, § 2 of the constitution, our Synod
recognizes it as its duty to follow the instruction given to the Church in
1 Cor. 12, according to which the gifts are to show themselves for the
common good. Now if we have a German synod and an English synod,
each possessing its own teaching institution, the result is that more
capable teachers are required to staff them than would be necessary for
the work to be done and for the Church's actual purpose. This
drawback would not arise with a close synodical union. Moreover, the
good teachers, of whom the German synod is naturally still richer at
present than the English one would be, could also be made use of and
drawn upon by the English speakers.

"One may perhaps ask here what is to become of the institutions of the
already existing English Synod, and the short answer to that would be
that no institution that can still serve the Church should be allowed to
close. Yet we must not overlook that our Synod has no authority over the
institutions of the English sister synod, and that what concerns us here
is the best interest of the Kingdom of God with regard to the
congregations and members of our own Synod that are becoming
English.

"c. If, alongside the German ones, we also have purely English teaching
institutions in our Lutheran Church, we will also soon get young
preachers who are not proficient in German, which will have two bad
consequences: for one thing, these preachers will not be able to serve
German Christians alongside English ones on the mission fields, as is