# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S179
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

* Reports on General Missions 177

or to close some of the missions which have definitely passed their
usefulness and to discontinue the salaries of men who year after
year fail to produce what reasonably might be expected of them.
At times the Christians of our mission-stations are unwilling to
follow the suggestion of the District mission boards to consolidate
their parish with a near-by congregation. We believe that all sub-
- gidized mission-fields ought to be encouraged to look not only to:
their own desires and wishes but to the development of the Church
at large. :

A plea to all congregations to look after the interests of the
Kingdom at large and a word of encouragement by this venerable
body to the various mission departments courageously but con-
scientiously and in brotherly love to meet this difficult problem
might be in order.

Wooing the Unconverted. — Following the missionaries far and
wide, interviewing them as they come and go, and meeting the
pastors in the cities and in the countryside, we. feel constrained to
ask, Are we wooing the sinner who is without God in the world,
not merely inviting them, not only talking to them casually, not
only sending them literature, etc., but wooing them as a lover does
the one whom he has chosen to be his own? It is an undeniable
fact that we as fishers of men —and I mean both pastors and the
laity — usually prefer to use the net rather than the line in en-
deavoring to gain these sinners. It is easier to speak about the
Lord to groups than to the individual, to gather a group of children
than to meet the parent, the unbeliever, the pagan.

True, there has been a marked improvement in gaining the
adult, but we feel that still greater emphasis ought to be placed on
wooing the sinner, and this in both Foreign and Home Mission
fields. It is clearly just as important to go out after the one as it
is to minister to the ninety and nine.

Preliminary Training of Missionaries. — We are all agreed that
mission-work is the primary business of the Church. We are also
agreed that all our missionaries for the mission-fields in foreign
fields as well as in the homeland ought to receive a specific practical _
training before they enter their respective fields of labor. We know
that Synod at its convention at St. Louis'in 1938 passed resolutions
to establish a department of missions at our Seminary in St. Louis;
but until now these resolutions could not be carried out. We be-
lieve, however, that the specific preliminary training is of such
importance for the proper development of our missions that further
study and consideration of this question is mandatory. Some steps
are now being taken by the Board of Foreign Missions toward the
preliminary training of their workers. We believe, however, that
more ought to be done toward the training of all missionaries in

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