# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S191
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Reports on General Miesions 189

iginal $15,000 subsidy within five years than good mission policies
i Any balance would, of course, revert to the General
ion Expansion Fund.

~The Mission Expansion Fund shall also be available to finance
istants to the pastor.” For example: Congregation Y. has
1,000 communicants. It is carrying a heavy budget, including five
arochial-school teachers. It is located in a section in which it is
impossible for the pastor to follow up the direct mission prospects
that he meets in his daily work at funerals, weddings, baptisms,
r other functions, not to speak of seeking contacts by means of
a house-to-house community canvass. The pastor is a typically
verworked and overburdened man. But the congregation can-
“not see its way clear to finance assistance for the pastor. He
eeds help. We have not a few congregations in Synod which
have glorious mission opportunities right in their own midst, con-
gregations which have all the necessary missionary equipment;
but man-power is needed to improve the opportunities.

To such a congregation and pastor the Home Mission Board,
upon application through the District Home Mission Board, may
grant a subsidy out of the Mission Expansion Fund to finance
an “assistant to the pastor.” Such an assistant to the pastor is to
be engaged for a period of time to be fixed by the pastor (subject,
of course, to the approval of the Home Mission Board). The Home
Mission Board would be empowered to grant a salary to such
“an assistant to the pastor” commensurate with the salary of the
pastor himself —up to $125 a month. It is our opinion that in
nine cases out of ten the financial arrangements for such an
assistant to the pastor would be taken over by the congregation
within a year or two. It is, of course, always within the discretion
of the Home Mission Board to terminate such an arrangement
with a congregation whenever it deems it wise and necessary to
_ do so. It must be understood that such subsidies to individual
congregations are to be made for the express purpose of improving
the mission opportunities in the territory in which such a con-
gregation is located.

The appropriated amount is to be left in the hands of the
General Synodical Treasury and paid out as needed upon receipt
of vouchers signed by the respective District Board, not exceeding
the amount of credit it has received from the Mission Expan-
sion Fund.

No Funds — No Expansion and No Debts

The mission-expansion work shall begin as soon as there are
enough funds available to finance one project along the lines
suggested in the plan. No funds are to be expended out of the
Expansion Fund until they are actually available in cash.