# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1908_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Proceedings of the twenty-second convention

can number, out of all heathen and peoples and tongues, wherever Christians have carried his Word, stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palms in their hands, and will cry with a loud voice: "Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb!"

Let us call this to mind as an introduction to our deliberations on our Negro Mission. It is the mission of the Lord Jesus, therefore we want to carry it on. It has to do with the most strayed and most lost of his sheep, therefore we want to carry it on with all the deeper compassion. It offers so many difficulties — at present more than ever —, therefore, so that we spoil nothing, we want only to let his voice sound. And finally, in spite of all apparent fruitlessness of our work, in spite of many, often very painful setbacks in the Negro Mission, we want to commit the success to him whose mission is sure to be successful and who brings his mission to its goal. —

Let us first, in a condensed description (a few exceptions will be allowed), let our mission stations pass before us, then turn our attention to our educational institutions, and finally consider in general important concerns of our Negro Mission.

A. Mission Stations.
I. Arkansas.

That there are colored Lutherans in Arkansas too is at present probably known to few in the Synodical Conference. The reason is that for the last twelve years little has been heard of them. In earlier years it was different. Then Arkansas usually stood in first place in the reports of the Commission for the Negro Mission. For in Little Rock the first resident missionary was stationed by the Synodical Conference in the year 1878, the first Lutheran Negro congregation founded, the first Lutheran Negro church built. For a time the mission here stood in fine bloom. But then there came such a decided, sad decline that in the year 1895 the missionary had to be dismissed and somewhat later the station given up. Since then the successive pastors of our white congregation in Little Rock have taken up the cause of the few Lutheran Negroes there who remained faithful, as far as they could. So it stands still today.

Is that worth mentioning at all? It is said that Negroes are inconstant and fickle. But here we have a little band of colored Lutherans who for fifteen years have had no pastor of their own, who are treated with disdain or contempt on all sides, by the whites because of their race, by the blacks because of their confession, and who have nevertheless remained faithful. It is said that Negroes are content to have pastors kept for them and churches and schools built, but they themselves