# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 Proceedings of the 29th General or

Now, just as in the first case it is the duty of the congregation
that is served to provide the minister of the Word with the means
necessary for the support of himself and his family, so too, in the
narrower sense, the care of ministers of the Word who have become
unable to serve, and of their dependents and survivors, respectively,
is the duty of the congregation that a minister of the Word last
served before he became unable to serve. If this congregation is not
able to meet this duty alone, then, strictly speaking, it is its duty
to turn for assistance to the congregation or congregations that the
minister of the Word served before that. If those congregations
cannot or will not give the necessary assistance, then it is the duty
of such a congregation to turn to the body of congregations — that is,
to the Synod to which it belongs — to obtain this assistance. Since
ministers of the Word are, in a broader sense, also servants of the
Synod, the care of such disabled ministers, and of their dependents
and survivors, then falls on the Synod as a duty.

Now it is an undeniable fact that in our Synod, the ministers of the
Word are, by and large, too poorly paid. In very many congregations
the salaries received by pastors and teachers with large families are
so small that they must constantly economize on the barest
necessities merely to keep their heads above water. Under such
circumstances, setting aside anything for a rainy day is entirely out
of the question. There is also the real danger that, through
inadequate provision, ministers of the Word are tempted to join
secular benefit societies so as not to stand entirely without means in
old age. The low salaries and the meager provision for old age bear
some of the blame for the fact that not a few among our schoolteachers
in particular have already laid down their office and taken up
another occupation with better pay. Our Synod has also already lost
to church service not a few capable sons of pastors and teachers,
because they had to experience the never-ending hardship of scraping
by in their parents' household. These facts make a thoroughgoing
improvement in the manner of caring for disabled servants of the
Church and their dependents, respectively their survivors, necessary —
indeed, required.

Since, however, what has been set out above, correct though it is in
principle, would create great difficulties in practical execution, and
would thereby also distribute the burden too unequally among the
congregations — some small and poor congregation would be burdened
beyond its means, while perhaps larger and wealthier congregations
would be called on for very little — there would, without doubt, under
our free-church conditions, be only one appropriate and workable way
of properly meeting this duty: that the Synod take this matter into
its own hands, so that, first, the ministers of the Word who have
become disabled, and their dependents and survivors, are adequately
cared for, and, further,