Collection › LCMS Convention Proceedings (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1935 · 36th Convention, Cleveland › Page 109
LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1935, Page 109

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

Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. 1935. 109

who was expected to be in charge of our Lutheran students attending
the college. The majority of contact men returned these lists with
the necessary corrections, keeping one copy for their own use. These
contact men have been urged periodically to speak in behalf of
Student Welfare Work at their District conventions and to make
use of the columns of their District paper to keep this phase of
church-work in the minds of our people. Conditions to which
reference will be made later restricted the contact of our Committee
with its contact men to written communications.

The custom of previous years of taking a student census was
continued in the fall of 1933 and 1984. In both years the facilities
of the Walther League office were placed at the disposal of our Com-
mittee for sending out the cards, tabulating the returns, and for-
warding them to the proper university pastors. For the purpose of
completing the record we shall list a summary return of the census
of both years.

1933: Total of out-of-town students ........ 525 1934: ...... 729
Total of local students .............. 940 cae 1,539
Total of Valparaiso students ........ 12000 ae 135
Total of all students reported ....... 1,585  — ...... 2,403
1934: Questionnaires sent to pastors ............... 2,800
Number of pastors returning questionnaire .... 1,336

The objection will be raised that these tabulations are not com-
plete and therefore do not present a true picture. This objection is
valid. Two facts should be kept in mind, however: 1. Under the
present system of Student Welfare Work there is little hope of real
improvement in this respect; neither the Walther League officials nor
the members of our Committee are in a position to follow up a census
of this kind and to convince themselves that all Lutheran students
are being spiritually provided for as well as circumstances permit.
2. The picture is not overdrawn; rather it does not truly reflect the
large number of our Lutheran students enrolled in the colleges and
universities of the United States.

Upon assuming office, our Committee found in existence a Stu-
dent District connected with, and sponsored by, the Walther League
under the direction of its Hospice Secretary. This district had been
organized in order to supply our Lutheran students with the oppor-
tunity of meeting occasionally in a convention and publishing a
periodical, the Student Leaguer, intended for Lutheran college
students. It should be acknowledged here that the finances needed to
maintain this Student District and to publish its paper were liberally
made available by the Walther League, even as the entire Student
District was conceived by the League only as a temporary expedient
until the Church would be in a position to offer something of a more
permanent character to her college students. Conventions of the