# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1914.                    153

Action of the Synod.

On Friday, May 15, the Synod resolved to adopt the Melrose petition
by and large. But when, on Saturday, May 16, in the last session, the
individual provisions were to be taken up for debate, the whole matter
was laid on the table.

Simplifying the Treasuries.

Petition.

The Atlantic District urgently requests that the 1911 petition
concerning the simplification of the treasuries — which was laid on the
table at the time, in the last session, because there was no more time
to discuss the matter even to some extent — be taken up for
deliberation this time. Having taken the liberty of making a few
inessential changes, it reads as follows:

We evidently have an unnaturally large number of treasuries. It would
be a small help if several similar treasuries were merged with one
another; but if real help is to be given, a thoroughgoing
simplification must be introduced, in something like the following way:
that the whole multitude of our treasuries be reduced to the following
six:

1. Synodical Treasury. Through this would pass all gifts for all
purposes of the Synod, including new buildings. This accords with our
Constitution. According to Chapter VI, I, 5, the money that pastors and
teachers pay into the Synodical treasury, and that is collected from
the congregations for this treasury, is to be used: "a. to defray the
Synod's general expenses (the officers' outlays, stationery, printing
costs for the Synodical Report, postage, and the like); b. to
accomplish churchly purposes (the founding and maintenance of church
institutions for training future pastors and teachers, and the like)."
— Should we not return to the original arrangement? Why should our
Christian people not give just as generously for new buildings if their
offerings go through the Synodical treasury as through a separate
building fund? Would it not be easier to gather, through one treasury,
the money we need for the Synod's actual purposes, than through two?
Should we not, in fact, work with all our strength toward filling our
Synodical treasury regularly and systematically, so that new buildings
too can be paid for out of it, provided they do not call for wholly
extraordinary sums?

2. Mission Treasury: a. of the General Synod, b. of the District. So
it originally was. "For mission there exists a separate treasury" —
so it reads in our Constitution (VI, I, 5). The congregations would
then no longer take up collections for each individual mission, but
simply for the mission treasury. All gifts for missions that the whole
Synod carries on would be sent by the treasurers to the General
Treasurer, and by him to a General Mission Commission, and the latter
would distribute the money to the commissions of the various