# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1906. 47

behind. Participation could and should be more general. We therefore stretch out our hands, as it were, also to those Christians who until now have been indifferent, who have contributed little or nothing to the support of this mission, who still stand idle here in the marketplace, that they might now also become active and help us, for Christ's sake, to pay these debts and to carry on the work more zealously. We may therefore well ask all friends of serving love: Remember the needy Negro Mission also on occasion in gifts and bequests!

To another, real difficulty we would now call attention, and that is the great lack of workers, of missionaries, itinerant preachers, pastors and schoolteachers. It is the old complaint, in the Negro Mission as in all missions. Workers, more workers we must have — godly, capable, faithful workers, workers who serve not for the sake of money, not for the sake of the belly (such do more harm than good), workers who, like Paul and Barnabas, give up their lives for the name of Jesus Christ.

Every faithful pastor and schoolteacher in the Negro Mission is a true blessing in the circle in which God has placed him. Religion, Christianity, the best of all that we have, is not something that merely springs up, grows and thrives of itself. To be sure, the weeds come of themselves. They grow out of the soil in every garden and will not die and perish. But the wheat must be tended, the field must be tilled, the seed must be sown, the acre must be protected. Sin springs up rank everywhere of itself and scatters its seed of poison and death everywhere. But life in the fear and love of God, in righteousness and truth, in purity and fidelity, in all that is any virtue, any praise, that does not come of itself — that comes from God, as Luther sets this forth so gloriously in the third article. That wants tending, among old and young. For this belongs the good seed, the Word. And to sow it rightly, to divide the Word rightly, one needs workers, capable workers, faithful workers, who know how to handle it in churches and schools, who do not go about it lightly, who truly earnestly and conscientiously serve the Lord of the harvest and preach him. And truly, that is a needful but also a blessed service! This Word of God, this Gospel, we must bring to the Negroes, if they are really to be helped. They must be brought together for worship, gathered into congregations as early as possible, and taught in Christian parish schools; and truly, there is room enough and work enough among the ten million Negroes of our country, especially in our Southern states. What has been built is to be maintained, what is weak strengthened, something new begun — but, mark well! more workers we must have!

But where are we to get preachers and teachers? In answering this question we in the Negro Mission have in the last