Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 258
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 258

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

258 HIGHER EDUCATION

high level. It is not an easy task to keep the offerings
attractive and easily available and yet make them worth-
while and academically sound. The Synod recognized
this dilemma when it resolved at the New York conven-
tion that the “responsibility for continuing education
for the professional personnel of the church continue
to be centered in the educational institutions of the
church and that the emphasis be on the academically
respectable work with a sound theological core.”

The Synod also resolved at New York that “the
Council of Presidents encourage continuing education
and that congregations be asked to cooperate in de-
veloping provisions for regular educational leaves (of
varying duration) for all pastors and teachers.” A grat-
ifying number of congregations have taken steps to
follow this suggestion. More congregations should be
urged to do so during the coming biennium.

7. Organize and Use a Consultative Assembly

During the long-range planning project of 1964 —67,
the Board for Higher Education assembled a group of
nationally recognized educators and found their anal-
yses and recommendations to be of significant help.
The board has regularly convened the college and
seminary presidents to solicit their advice and assistance.
The various commissions, made up of administrators
and faculty members from the schools, meet regularly
and make recommendations to the board concerning
matters of policy and planning.

However, as the scope of the board’s responsibility
has broadened, as the challenges and problems faced
by the schools and the board have increased in com-
plexity, and as more of the members appointed to the
board have, of necessity, been specialists in education,
the Board for Higher Education has come to feel the
need for more opportunities for direct access to the
opinions of the various groups of constituents in the
church. More opportunity to solicit grass-root reaction
has become desirable.

As one step toward fulfilling this need, the board
plans to organize and use a consultative assembly, The
present plan is to include about 25 people in this group.
The exact procedure for selecting the individual mem-
bers has not been determined as yet. However, the
board feels that the assembly should include representa-
tion from lay men and women, young people, profes-
sional educators, and clergymen. Members of this
group will be asked to consult with the board and to
offer suggestions for strengthening the ministerial
training program of the church.

8. Support Studies Needed for
and for Improving the System
The Board for Higher Education, realizing the

necessity for continuous and rigorous study of the sys-

tem, appointed a new commission—the Commission
on Research and Planning—following the New York
convention. The task of this commission is to assist the
board in following up on the completed long-range

Decision-Making

planning project. In order to implement this assign-
ment, the commission has been asked to recommend
policies and programs relating to research and planning,
to identify areas which require study concerning the
system and its future, and to suggest procedures which
will help stimulate and coordinate institutional and
system research on the various campuses.

Two of the major projects now under way in higher
education in the Synod include a program for the train-
ing of a black diaconate in the Chicago area anda study
of the curriculum needs for seminary education in
the 1970s.

Black Diaconate

The Chicago program has been prepared, planned,
and developed by the black clergymen and laymen of
the area in consultation with the Board for Higher
Education and with the assistance of Concordia Teachers
College in River Forest. In the project Negro men above
college age will be given classroom and on-the-job
training as assistants to the pastors who are serving
parishes in the black and the changing neighborhoods
of Chicago. Ongoing studies and evaluation techniques
constitute an integral part of the plan so that the pro-
gram itself can be revised as needed and its potential
value for use in other communities with similar needs
can readily be determined.

Ministry in the '70s and ‘80s

The seminary curriculum study is being funded by
the Aid Association for Lutherans. A full-time director
has been employed for one year. The major thrust of
the effort will be to develop a seminary curriculum
which will better prepare a man for the ministry in
the 1970s and 1980s.

IN CLOSING

It is both regrettable and inevitable that the board’s
report to the convention, as well as many of its own
deliberations, must be ‘problem centered.” Fortunately,
this is not the whole picture.

Campus visits, informal and personal conversations
with teachers and students, and sessions with recently
graduated ministers tend overwhelmingly to represent
another motif. It is one of joyful, conscientious, if often
unself-conscious, dedication to a high vocation.

So it must be with all of us. God’s lavish and ex-
travagant goodness permits us no doubts or fears con-
cerning His Gospel, nor toward the ministry which
mediates it.

The future will bring many changes, but the Gospel
is everlasting. The church, which is built upon Him who
is Himself that Gospel, although beset by many enemies
and often discouraged by apparent setbacks and “‘cut-
backs,” will also stand.

And as long as it does, men will take counsel to-
gether to find and share the full meaning of God’s Word
to world and church and seek to proclaim it clearly
and faithfully.