# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1926_S251
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1926. 237

seems probable. Although numbering less than 100 communicants,
it wanted a church seating about 700 persons. In numerous cases,
congregations numbering less than 200 communicants, and whose
increase in membership had not been great, desired churches seating
twice or three times their communicant membership.

We consulted government statistics and found that the Prot-
estant churches of the United States seat 53,500,000 people, and only
15,000,000 persons attend church with a fair degree of regularity.
In other words, 72 per cent. of the seating capacity of the average
Protestant church lies vacant, except on Christmas Eve and Easter
Day. While the congregations of our circles can show a much higher
average, yet it cannot be denied that much money is often spent
needlessly in seating space that lies idle the greater part of the time.

This leads to a second source of economic waste. If a small
congregation builds a church much larger than necessary, and with
inordinate stress on facilities for social and recreational activities,
it means that it must resort to flimsy structural methods or else go
heavily in debt. Statistics seem to indicate that about $750,000 is

' spent annually, in a church-body the size of ours, in painting and
patching church-buildings, Had these buildings been properly con-
structed at the outset, this enormously high overhead could be re-
duced most decidedly. ;

Believing that much money is spent in building needlessly large
churches and much more in keeping poorly constructed buildings in
repair, we have often advised smaller churches and better construc-
tion. In many instances we have succeeded in this respect.

A vacant pew ten feet long represents an initial cost of from
$1,200 to- $1,400. If a church has ten such pews lying vacant fifty
Sundays a year, it means an initial cost of $12,000 to $15,000. The
interest on that sum of money is from $720 to $900 per year. ;

By building our churches slightly smaller and considerably better

ein materials and workmanship, much money ought to be released each

year for missionary and educational activities. Often the amount of

ae money spent on meaningless elaboration would have made a cheaply

built church durable.
‘r~ For these reasons we have stressed slightly smaller buildings,
thoroughly good structural methods, simplicity of treatment rather
than futile elaboration of detail, and materials that resist as much as
Possible the action of time and weather.

While the sectarian theater-type church has never been popular
in our circles, yet we have met with it in a few cases and have usually
“been successful in persuading the congregations to build a type of
church that more nearly conforms to the traditional churches of
“Lutheran lands. The sects have very largely given up the theater-

style church as a failure. |