# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

32 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

Since our congregations in future must grow more and more out of the families if they are to continue to exist; since, further, our higher institutions of learning can expect their enrolment only from the circle of the Christian-educated young, the future existence of our congregations rests in large part on the prosperity of the congregational school.

First, a disclaiming remark may find its place here. It is wrong to explain the necessity of our congregational schools by saying that one points to the preservation of the German language, as if that were their chief work. That it is not. We must on the one hand accustom ourselves to the thought that our young people are gradually becoming English, and that we shall not be able to prevent this process of change. On the other hand we must hold fast that even where the interest of the German language does not come into play at all, the Christian congregational school is nevertheless necessary. We have indeed begun English mission work in our circles, and under the labor of our English brethren more and more faithfully Lutheran congregations of English tongue are growing up. These have, however, just as we ourselves, the holy duty to establish congregational schools as soon as this is at all feasible; their pastors also must, until other help can be provided, for the time being themselves undertake this laborious work.

So it is not for this reason that we speak and fight for our congregational schools, that it was a matter of the German language. We would not, to be sure, have this understood again as if we did not love our mother tongue, as if we cared nothing that it be preserved also for our descendants, or even as if we did not recognize the high importance of the German language for our church, as if we did not consider that it is the one in which Luther and many other teachers of our church have left us such glorious treasures of heavenly wisdom. No, by this we reject only the thought that our German congregational schools are in the first place German schools. We want to accustom our people not to say: I send my child to the German school, not to the English one, but to speak thus: I send my child not to the state school, but to the Christian congregational school. Not to the language that our Luther spoke, but to the Word of God which he proclaimed, shall the congregational school serve; not the language which is spoken in most of our congregations, but the congregations themselves shall help to support the congregational school.

True, the existence of the church in general, and also the existence of the individual congregation, does not depend on such an arrangement as the