# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S85
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of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 83

their faithful and heavy labour from suffering want, the Commission has had to turn recently already for temporary help to the General Treasurer of the Missouri Synod. May the Venerable Synodical Conference give its special attention to the circumstance that within its bounds there is, in many places, a lack of interest in the Negro Mission. Your Commission is of the opinion that the state of the Negro Mission is such that this mission ought to awaken interest among all our Christians. We cannot report mass conversions. But our young mission nevertheless counts 80 communicants, who have been won by careful instruction in the pure doctrine of the Word of God. Think too of the 300–400 school children who are taught daily in our mission schools. We may hope, and have in part already experienced it, that at least a part of these pupils will be won for the church and that a Lutheran generation is growing up in them. Your Commission is of the opinion that the Venerable Synodical Conference should seek not merely to maintain the Negro Mission in its present state, but to put two and threefold strength into it. We permit ourselves to point to the following: According to the report of our missionary there are in New Orleans still thousands of Negroes without church provision. Even if black preachers now and then appear among them, their preaching is by no means to be called a Christian one, since they do not even present parts of the Christian doctrine. Further we turn attention again to the rural districts of the Southern states, especially of Louisiana. Here one of our former missionaries, on a journey through this territory, found many Negroes without church provision. And that this state of things has not yet changed, the following from a sectarian periodical may be cited as evidence. In the "Congregationalist" a correspondent from the South writes: "In the South there are nearly 7 million blacks, not a quarter of whom are reached by the influence of Christianity. . . The main population (in the South) is found in the hamlets and villages and the greater part are Negroes, who live on in ignorance and sin. Evidently these many hundreds of thousands cannot be reached by white missionaries; that must be done by people of their own race." If, as regards the figures, there is perhaps some exaggeration here, there is nevertheless evidently a good measure of truth at the bottom of this description. What does the Venerable Synodical Conference wish to do in this state of things? If it recognizes it as its duty to extend further the pegs of the tent of the Negro Mission, the Commission would propose: 1.) to appoint a second missionary in New Orleans, who should open a third school and third preaching station there. It seems to us of great importance to create for the mission in New Orleans as broad a base as possible. One congregation then strengthens the other, and our mission would the large Negro population