# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S178
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176 Reports on General Missions

As we study the work of the Deaf Missions, we find that great
strides forward have been made in educating the deaf. In many
schools for the deaf speech instruction and speech reading is added
to the instruction of the sign-language. In this manner the deaf
are more and more made participating members of the hearing
world. Since a number of schools for the deaf concentrate on
oralism in the early years of the training of such deaf children as
are educable in speech and in lip-reading and only in later years
advance to the instruction in the sign-language, there is grave
danger that we lose out on the Christian training of deaf children
at a time when their little hearts and minds are more receptive for
the sacred truths than in later years of their lives. Are we keeping
pace with these new developments? We know that the Board of
Missions to Deaf and Blind as well as the missionaries have more
or less given some thought to these new developments; but we be-
lieve that the time has come that we bend every effort to meet the
present situation,

Colored Missions in the United States.— As members of the
Synodical Conference we participate in the Colored Missions of the
United States. The trend of the Negro race is still to migrate
northward, especially to the large metropolitan areas. Many op-
portunities are beckoning. In a number of cities groups of white
congregations have successfully banded together to establish col-
ored congregations. In recent years new missions were begun in
Detroit, Mich., Evansville, Ind., Pittsburgh, Pa., Toledo, O., Indian-
apolis, Ind., and Houston, Tex. Our share of the 1941 budget for
Colored and African Missions is $92,870.18.

Our Missionaries at Home and Abroad. — God blessed us with
a large number of consecrated, well-qualified, energetic, aggressive
missionaries. For this we must be truly grateful. Yet, as in every
field of labor, so also in this, there are such as cannot or will not
measure up to the task before them. We know that the various
boards are conscious of this fact and that they are ever bent on
helping to improve conditions, to transfer such workers to fields
where they are able to meet the demands made upon them or, if
they prove to be unfit, to dismiss them. All of this is done in
brotherly love and in keeping with Scripture.

Our Mission-Stations at Home and Abroad. — In various
' mission-fields there are, we believe, such as could well be con-
solidated with others under one pastor or missionary and such as
for good reasons ought to be closed. It seems as if it gradually has
become an unwritten law: Once a missionary or pastor, always
a missionary or pastor; and once a mission-station, always a mis-
sion-station. It seems as if this unwritten law is a deterrent to
some of the mission departments to consolidate some of the fields