# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1935_S301
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1935. 989

This report is the result of a most careful inquiry and deserves
study and consideration. It serves as an illustration of the possibili-
ties of a pension plan and indicates the essential features. Your Com-
mittee gave the entire pension question careful study. It is obvious
that because of lack of time and other circumstances neither your
.Committee nor Synod as a body can decide upon the technical details
of a pension plan.

Your Committee nevertheless believes that an elastic and flexible
pension plan is feasible and would be of great benefit to Synod. The
burden on our Support Fund would in time be relieved considerably.
We are reliably informed that the peak of the number of applicants
for support has not been reached. Moreover, little expense on the
part of Synod would be involved in initiating and maintaining a
pension system for its workers. Your Committee is aware that by
instituting a pension plan, Synod as such may urge the workers and
congregations, but cannot coerce them, to make fixed contributions
to a retirement pension fund.

Your Committee recommends : —

1. That Synod institute a pension system for its servants of the
Word;
2. That the pension plan be elastic and flexible in order to fit the
various conditions and possibilities obtaining in Synod;

3. That the plan be based on a safe and sound actuarial foun-
dation.

In order to carry out the proposed pension system, your Com-
mittee recommends furthermore: —

1. That Synod’s Board of Support, together with an Advisory
Pension Committee of not fewer than five members, appointed by the
Board of Directors, be directed to institute the pension system;

2. That the details of the plan and its execution must be approved
by Synod’s Board of Directors and’ the College of Presidents;

3. That’ the Board of Directors be authorized to make the neces-
sary expenditures incurred by the establishment of a pension system.

Your Committee also had the opportunity to study the pension
plan proposed by a legal-reserve association of fellow-Lutherans. The
plan has been prepared in detail by actuarial experts. Your Com-
mittee does not feel that it can make a definite recommendation
whether a pension system for our workers controlled by a corporation
or association other than Synod itself is advisable or not. It there-
fore proposes that this question be given into the hands of the Board
of Support, the Advisory Pension Committee, the Board of Directors,
and the College of Presidents, with power to. act.

- inAction of Synod. -
vw" This report with its recommendations was adopted.
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