# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1928_S118
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

118

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

=I

Temporary Chapel and School, Camden, Ala.

figure — over 2,000 Lutherans in Alabama — is in
itself wonderful, does not even tell the whole story
of the blessings that have come to scores of Black
Belt homes and communities. Eternity alone will

reveal how hundreds not at all connected with our
Church have learned to know Jesus, the only Savior
of sinful mankind. ;

We have now in Alabama twenty-nine organized
Six of those have a membership of

congregations.

the nomadic tendencies of the colored people have
helped to deplete our membership. These souls,
however, have not all been lost to the Church, since
most of them have joined a Lutheran congregation
elsewhere on the field here or in the North. Aside
from the twenty-nine organized congregations in
Alabama the Gospel of Christ Crucified is being
preached at three other places: at the Tuskegee
Veterans’ ITospital (attendance, about 125), at
Normal State College, Montgomery (attendance,
about 100), and at East Selma. East Selma is
a slum district, and the cost of supporting a teacher,
in fact, all expenses connected with this work, is
borne by Alabama congregations without aid from
the Mission Board.

With 1,225 communicants in ‘our Alabama
churches we have had in five months 1,644 guests at
the Lord’s Table. There is no reason why this rate
will not be kept up during the remainder of the
year, in which event we shall, D. v., by the end of
1928 have approximately 4,000 who have been
guests at the Lord’s Table, an everage considerably
over three times for each member per year.

I quote from a very recent report: “In our
thirly Black Belt schools, including the Luther
College here in Selma, where girls are prepared for

An Open-Air Service in Alabama.

over a hundred souls. Rosebud, the mother congre-

"gation, leads with 221 baptized members; ten con-

gregations have seventy souls or more, with good

prospects for going over a hundred. Prospects at all

places are promising, except at one or two, where

work in our mission-schools, thirty-seven female
and five male teachers and four pastors are in-
structing 1,706 children in the one thing needful.
Our Sunday-schools have an enrolment of 1,481.
We have referred to the streams of blessings