# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1905_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1905. 19

...cannot possibly be made good again. The representatives of the General
Synod have taken pains, for their part, to bring this truth to light in
the district synods. In this they have found willing support in all the
district synods. The number of students at our synodical institutions has
grown by 253 in the last triennium as well, from 1,160 to 1,413. But not
for another four years will we have a larger number of candidates for the
preaching ministry available. The number of candidates for the teaching
ministry will be greater from 1906 on. At present we are still suffering
badly from the aftereffects of the panic of 1896. The expansion of the
institutions at Hawthorne, Concordia, and St. Paul resolved by the last
Delegate Synod has been carried out and has for its part contributed to
increasing the number of students. Now the memorials of the boards of
control and district synods concerned are before the Reverend Synod,
asking that the institutions, Seward included, be raised to full
institutions. I, for my part, hold that these memorials should be
granted. Circumstances press toward this. We are long past the point
where two full gymnasiums and one full seminary could supply us with the
teachers we need.

Our Treasuries.

Most of our treasuries were able to meet the demands made on them. But
two treasuries closed on February 1 of this year with a deficit: the
General Building Fund and the Synod Treasury, the latter chiefly because
it incurred extraordinary expenses and was drawn into the trouble by the
Building Fund. The real deficit lies in the Building Fund. This fund
carried over a deficit of about $30,000 from earlier years at the time of
the last Delegate Synod, and in the last triennium, as in earlier years,
the last third of the amount pledged was not collected. In addition, the
Building Fund had extraordinary and larger expenses for street and canal
construction in Fort Wayne, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Seward, amounting to
about $12,000. God has also visited us with fire damage in Concordia, the
repair of which required about $3,000. All this has greatly increased the
old debt in the Building Fund. But how willing our dear Christians are to
pay off the debts of the Building Fund appears from the fact that, on a
suggestion from Illinois, extra contributions for the Building Fund
amounting to about $50,000 have been pledged in six synodical districts
and in part already paid in. If in the remaining districts the dear
Christians, with the emergency...