# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S86
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

86 Proceedings of the 28th General or

Missions.

1. Inner Mission.
(Proclamation of the Word among fellow believers.)

A. At Home.

a. General Inner Mission in North America.

There exists a commission that receives Christians' gifts directly
from all districts for Inner Mission, and to which the commissions of
individual districts also deliver the surplus of their district's
Inner Mission treasury. The commission distributes the money thus
collected to the synodical districts that cannot by themselves cover
the expenses of sending out traveling preachers among fellow
believers.

The commission reported on its activity as follows:

From the treasury for General Inner Mission in North America, the
sum of $36,579.00 was paid out from October 1908 to April 1911, on
the commission's instruction, by the treasurer of the General Synod.
Of this sum, the Canada District received $800.00, the California and
Nevada District $6,910.00, the Minnesota and Dakota District
$5,735.00, the Southern District $9,700.00, the Texas District
$5,650.00, and the Washington and Oregon District $7,777.00; total:
$36,579.00.

The sum requested by the above-named districts was $62,514.00, so
that $25,935.00 was lacking to provide the necessary help. Even the
sum of $36,579.00 was not on hand, so that the commission, in order to
relieve the very greatest need, had to borrow from other treasuries,
and as of March 3 still had a debt of $2,841.56.

In this triennium, too, the quarterly distribution often could not
take place, since there was nothing in the treasury. Only once could
all requests be satisfied, since, by God's grace, a fellow believer
gave our treasury the sum of $5,000.00. As a result of the active and
blessed labor of all the districts in the work of Inner Mission, there
was in most district treasuries no "surplus" on hand, and so the
General Mission Treasury remained empty. In response to our repeated
inquiries, the mission commissions reported that they had nothing to
spare. In November of last year we found ourselves compelled to send
a petition to all pastors and to ask for a "special gift" for our
treasury.

We urgently request the Reverend Synod to discuss the matter of the
General Inner Mission Treasury thoroughly and to find ways and means
of relieving the want in this treasury. At the very least, the
commission should be given the right to make the treasury's state of
need known at the appropriate time in the "Lutheraner" and to ask for
gifts. The cause of Inner Mission suffers great harm, since the
districts so badly in need of assistance quite often find themselves in