# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1900. 27

congregational school can offer what we need for our children, and religion schools are not enough.

Thus the congregational school stands as the one arrangement by which Christian parents are truly served in the education of their children. There the children receive every day their portion of God's Word, the bread of life; there they are led every day more deeply into the truths of Christianity and brought to ever clearer knowledge of them; there the ideas begotten by God's Word gain ever more mastery in their minds, so that they control everything else. There, what is of the highest importance, everything can go its course arranged according to plan. At the beginning of the school year the teacher begins with his plan and has carried it out by its close. He can say: This and that the children have learned this year; so far we shall get in the next year, and when the children have completed the school, this and that has been worked through with them. The carrying out of such a plan, which governs the whole instruction, is possible only where the school is kept day after day without interruption.

Let us gather up what has been said: we come to the result that, in comparison with the state school, the Sunday school, confirmation instruction and the religion school, the congregational school is the only arrangement that truly answers the need of the Christian home with respect to an arrangement for common education of the young.

Since it is possible in a congregation independent of the state to make such an arrangement, and since in many cases it has been done and has proved itself excellently, there arises from this for the Christian congregation the duty of love to establish a congregational school, that is, a school of the kind described above. But why does the congregation have this duty, and indeed the whole congregation? Education is, after all, the parents' affair; so let the parents within the congregation see to the establishing of a congregational school! Some have already thought so. And there are also cases on record where it was so done. Because the congregation could not be moved to found a school, a number of parents called into being a school society within the congregation and set up a school which in other respects was constituted exactly like our other congregational schools. But this is evidently not the right thing. If in the congregation a member or a number falls into earthly need, we do not consider it right that a relief society form and set to work to remedy the need. Where one member suffers, all suffer with him, and should help to bear it, each according to his powers. In the education of children also a need is involved which cries to the members of the congregation for relief. True, the children stand in faith through baptism, but they need instruction for the furthering and grounding of their faith, their love and hope. They need it,