# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S99
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of Board for Higher Education 97

I. Matters Referred to the Board for Higher Education
‘ by the Synodical Convention of 1938

The synodical convention of 1938 referred a number of matters
to the Board for Higher Education for consideration and action.
We beg leave to submit our reports and recommendations con-
cerning these matters:

A. The Board for Higher Education was instructed to work
out a regulative and to submit it to the present convention (Pro-
ceedings, 1938, p.43). This regulative has been submitted to the
Committee on the Revision of the Synodical Handbook and will be
presented to this convention as a part of the recommendations
of that committee.

B. Your Board was instructed to give further study to the
office of Director of Religious Education (Proceedings, 1938, p. 49).
This study has amply demonstrated the truth of the statement
made in the 1935 memorial that, with the possible exception of
the small parish, “the demands upon the modern pastor’s time and
strength make it increasingly difficult for him adequately to instruct
all children of the Church,” not to speak of confirmed young people
and adults nor of young and old in the community who might be
won for the Kingdom by timely instruction.

About one third of our congregations is endeavoring to meet
its responsibilities and opportunities by calling to the assistance
of their pastors one or more professionally trained teachers.
In addition to their major activities in full-time parish-schools
the teachers likewise share with the pastor many duties incident to
the guidance of youth after confirmation as well as the instruction
of children who cannot be reached by the parish-school. Thus the
pastor, with the help of qualified teachers, is enabled to carry
forward a thorough and comprehensive program of education,
so that the spiritual nurture of the flock of Christ may approximate
as nearly as possible the standards which God Himself has set up
in His Word.

By the same token the memorial contends that “the educational
program of a church without a Christian day-school to meet the
needs of the times, requires the full time of a trained educator.”
The memorial therefore petitions Synod “to make provision at one
or both of its teacher seminaries for the training of ‘directors of
Christian education’ who will be equipped to serve congregations
that have no Christian day-school as instructors in week-day
religious schools, as superintendents of Sunday- and Bible-schools,
as church organists and choir directors, and as missionaries par-
ticularly to the children.”

Continuing the work of the previous committee, your Board
has taken this matter under careful advisement with the faculties

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