The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 85

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

85

of Cleveland, has kindly consented to organize and
teach a children’s choir in our colored mission. —
The congregations of the Eastern Field report hav-
ing had good atttendances for their Laster services,
among them many strangers. — The church atten-
dance at our mission in Springfield, Illinois, has
made great advance strides, the attendance this year
being sixty per cent. better than last year, and the
Sunday-school attendance has doubled itself. — At
Spartanburg, our only station in South Carolina,
the ladies’ aid paid for the calcimining of the in-
terior of the church, improved the grounds with
shrubbery, and gave a new velvet altar covering.
F.J.L.

Opening of a New Station in
New Orleans.

In January of this year a Sunday-school was
opened under the supervision of Pastor M. Kramer
by Miss Beulah Millender, principal of the Mount
Zion School, in a part of New Orleans lying between
the territories of Mount Zion and Bethlehem sta-
tions on the north and Concordia Station on the
south, at 3327 Short Street in what had been a
small three-room house, but which the Baptists had
converted into a chapel and furnished with rude
benches and a pulpit. Not having had any success
with their mission, the Baptists had abandoned the
enterprise, and our people were able to rent the
building for $1.50 a week.

When Miss Millender opened the Sunday-school,
she had ten children in attendance, but this num-
ber has steadily grown, to forty children and ten
adults. The rental and all other expenses are de-
frayed from the collections.

Three mission-minded Lutherans, who originally
hail from our St. Paul’s Church at Mansura,
Louisiana, are the real pioneers of the new venture,
which is expected to bud into a healty mission-
station by mid-summer. This enterprise had its be-
ginning in the home of two of these former Man-
sura members. These members canvassed the
neighborhood for prospects, and they found and
rented the chapel which is now used as a place of
worship. Several members of Mount Zion Church
assisted in the canvass. An adult catechumen class
of four members has been formed. Pastor O. W.
Luecke of Mount Zion is the pastor in charge of
the new station. F.J.L.

“Te Bible is a window in this prison world
through which we may look into eternity.”

Sunday-School Services at Mount Zion,
New Orleans.

Sunday-school services is the name given to a
combination of the Sunday-school and the Sunday-
morning service conducted at Mount Zion Bvan-
gelical Lutheran Church, New Orleans, Louisiana.

This Sunday-school service consists of the
complete Common Order of Service found in the
Missouri Synod hymnal, published by Concordia
Publishing House, St. Louis, Missouri. However,
when the hymn following the sermon has been sung,
the Sunday-school teachers take their respective
classes —the four day-school teachers teach the
day-school children in Sunday-school, while two
special Sunday-school teachers teach the children
not attending the day-school, and the pastor has the
adult Bible class.

Immediately following the Sunday-school lesson,
the collection is raised and the roll-call taken ac-
cording to classes, whereupon the benediction and
doxology bring the Sunday-school service to a close.
Once a month the Communion service is added, the
Sunday-school lesson being dispensed with for
the day.

The attendance at the Sunday-school service
consists mostly of children, there being a total at-
tendance of about 175 on good days, of whom seven
are teachers, thirty confirmed children, and ten or
twelve adults. The Sunday-night service is the prin-
cipal service for adults.

The question will naturally arise: Why change
the Sunday-school into a Sunday-school service?

Answer: Conditions in our community demand
such an arrangement.

First of all, there is the fact that 200 of the 230
children of our Sunday-school come from non-
Lutheran homes. Their parents are either members
of no church at all, or they are Baptist, Methodist,
Catholic, ete. Most of them surrender their chil-
dren to us for religious training and baptism and
confirmation because they value our day-school
highly, but they themselves continue strangers to_
our Church.

Most of the children, furthermore, cannot get
out for night services and would not remain for a
separate morning service after a regularly conducted
Sunday-school. How else, then, can we train them
into regular attendance of a Lutheran service than
by making that service a part of the Sunday-school.

Then, too, there are the newly confirmed chil-
dren from non-Lutheran homes, most of whom