# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1905_S148
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

148 Proceedings of the 26th General or

...a desire for improvement of the support hitherto given is entirely useless if we cannot find a way to silence the complaints and fulfill the wishes. Our Synod is, after all, so richly blessed that truly the poor in its midst need suffer no want.

"The Relief Commission therefore takes the liberty of recommending the following arrangement:

"1. Every special conference, of pastors as well as of teachers, in all districts of the Synod, shall elect from its midst a patron of the relief fund, who shall immediately and carefully concern himself, with genuine interest, with those needing support.

"2. He shall see to it that every congregation takes up a collection annually for the said fund, and likewise that every pastor and teacher pays a personal contribution to it.

"3. He shall remind delinquent members in a friendly manner not to forget the relief fund.

"4. At conference services he shall remind the local pastor to ask his congregation to designate the collection taken up for the relief fund.

"5. The district relief commissions shall be left free, together with the patron, to determine the sum that is to flow to each individual person needing support, according to need.

"6. Every widow, or every old or sick pastor or teacher, should be supported according to their particular circumstances and needs.

"If the matter of support is carefully pursued in all circles of our great Synod in the manner named above, it cannot fail that we will no longer have to complain of inadequate provision for those among us needing support. God grant us all a merciful heart and an open hand." (Petition of the General Relief Commission.)

Resolved, that the foregoing petition be adopted by the Synod, and that the motions or proposals named in it be urgently recommended to all the individual special conferences of pastors and teachers, for the support of the widows and orphans of deceased pastors and teachers, as well as of poor, sick, and infirm pastors and teachers.