LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Sheet 450

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OTHER REPORTS 417

staffing pattern for the Division of Service to Military Per-
sonnel. The staff will now consist of one person from eac
of the church bodies “who is to be a staff member of the
division and who will provide staff service to the church
body.” The Missouri Synod representative has been named.
He is Chaplain Milton S. Ernstmeyer, executive secretary
of the Synod’s Armed Forces Commission and a U.S. Navy
chaplain for 30 years. The fact that council staff can in a
formally structured way be seen and used as church body
staff is an illustration of a basic intention about the council
and its staff: namely. that they are a part of rather than
apart from the church bodies.

These changes are part of the forward movement we see
as we try to measure inter-Lutheran cooperation during the
past year through the council. We can cite a number of
other encouraging accomplishments and developments.

Under the able direction of the council’s Director of Busi-
ness and Finance, Mr. Walter Jensen, two pilot pre-retire-
ment seminars for pastors took place. Whether pre-retire-
ment counseling should become a continuing program for
the council remains a question for the future. But it has
already been clearly established that the council is serving
the churches well by sponsoring pilot efforts in an area of
increasingly pressing concern.

Lutheran Selective Service Information has continued
a very active program of service to its supporting units in
the three church bodies. The impending termination of the
draft and the Defense Department announcement that no
further draft calls wil be issued now confront the policy
committee with a major decision regarding the future direc-
tion of the work being done through this office.

The council's Office of Research Statistics and Archives
developed a study of “factors related to determining boun-
daries of the territorial divisions of the cooperating churches
and of their cooperative organizations.” The extensive re-
port pointed to the development of regionalization in the
country and suggested appropriate responses on the part
of national and judicatory church administration.

Being the person responsible for the chaplaincy programs
at Scout summer camps was one of the ways the director
of the council’s Office of National Youth Agency Relation-
ships, Mr. Ralph Dinger, a Missouri Synod teacher, helped
to increase understanding and appreciation of Lutheran
concerns by civic youth agency leaders during the year. He
also achieved increased recognition by individuals and com-
mittees in the church bodies and their jurisdictional units
of the potentials of civic youth agencies in a congregation's
ministry to youth, and he helped improve the understanding
and performance of Lutheran adults in leadership roles in
civie youth agencies.

The Division of Service to Military Personnel continued
to provide professional support for the extended active duty
Lutheran chaplains, who as of this February number 326.
In addition, 478 pastors are currently in the Reserve forces,
61 in the military seminarian program and 95 in the Civil
Air Patrol. The completion of a shift from a facility-oriented
toa person-centered ministry to the military took place with
the official closing this March of the two remaining division-
supported stateside service centers at Killeen, Texas, and
Jacksonville, North Carolina.

The Lutheran Housing Coalition has come into being and
is attached to the new Division of Mission and Ministry. The
Rev. Albert Erickson, an ALC minister. has joined the coun-
cil staff to serve the interests of those agencies in the church
bodies whose program assignments include concern for the
facilitation of housing, particularly for the aged and low-
and middle-income families. What effect recent decisions
by the Nixon administration may have on the program and
activities of the Coalition cannot yet be determined.

Those agencies in the church bodies charged with re-
sponsibility for world missions have extended their request
for the council's staff service to their joint participation in
the Lutheran World Mission Consultation. They have also
now agreed to acquire through the council staff service nec-
essary to the effective maintenance of their cooperative Lu-
theran Missionary Training Program. The program's direc-
tor since 1968 and a former ALC missionary to Japan. the
Rev. Ivan B. Fagre, has joined the staff of the Division of
Mission and Ministry to handle this assignment.

The DMM staff has now assumed primary consultative
responsibility for over 50 inter-Lutheran social service

agencies, including the monitoring of their activities, finan-
cial position and major staff and program changes and the
interpretation to the agencies of each church body’s polity,
policies, programs. and procedures.

During the past year we have also made some progress
toward establishing an inter-Lutheran response to domestic
disasters. A committee representative of the presidents of
the church bodies has proposed the creation of a Disaster
Response Board, which would coordinate Lutheran response
when disaster strikes anywhere within the U.S. The inten-
tion is that the council furnish the continuing staff work
required by such a board.

The wisdom of cooperation in activities such as disaster
response is demonstrated on a continuing basis by the par-
ticipation of the three church bodies in Lutheran World
Relief, the agency which functions so effectively as the inter-
national arm of the churches. Such wisdom was also illus-
trated and dramatized by the immediacy and competence
with which the council’s Department of Immigration and
Refugee service was able to represent the churches in the
movement and resettlement in the U.S. of 96 families of
Ugandan expellees.

The excitement and opportunity of living and working
with new people in new settings was the highlight of the
year for 74 new volunteers who served through the council’s
World Brotherhood Exchange program. These volunteers
serve at the request of 23 churches and agencies in 13 coun-
tries.

Another forward step last year was the authorization of
a new Office on World Community to be operated jointly by
the council and the U.S. A. National Committee of the LWF.
It will give the church bodies information on international
issues, With special attention to activities at the United
Nations.

A new service authorized for the Division of Campus
Ministry and Educational Service will aim at the full inte-
gration of students into the life and mission of the parish.
This much-needed service aims at the growing number of
students who commute daily and weekends and consequently
spend much of their lives at home and in their own parishes.
Studies show that less than half of these students participate
in church life.

The Division of Campus Ministry and Educational Ser-
vice has an office in Washington, D.C., to present the needs
of Lutheran schools to government representatives. During
the year this office devoted a great deal of attention to the
interests of church-related colleges as affected by the Higher
Education Bill of 1972, revision of Department of Labor
guidelines on religious and ethnic discrimination, lease of
excess government property to educational institutions, ap-
propriations for higher education, and postal rates for edu-
cational institutions.

Farly this year the Division of Public Relations, now the
Office of Communication and Interpretation, Jaunched a radio
film review series called “Cinema Sound.” The film_re-
viewer is the division's executive secretary, Mr. Robert E. A.
Lee, who also heads Lutheran Film Associates. The series is
designed to assist the moviegoer to identify a film’s moral
and ethical value “system.”

As part of its assignment to develop theological consensus
within the church bodies, the Division of Theological Studies
during 1972 developed and field tested a draft statement on
“The Church and Office of Ministry” and jJaunched a new
study project dealing with "The Function of Doctrine and
Theology in Light of the Unity of the Church.” In its at-
tempt to provide joint Lutheran research, study and con-
sultation on matters concerning all Christians today, the
division sponsored four regional conferences on “Discerning
God's Presence and Action in the World Today.” A 3-year
series of Lutheran-Episcopal conversations was completed
with the results published in a booklet, and the first two
of a projected series of six Lutheran-Reformed dialogs took
place. U.S. Lutherans will have an opportunity to assess
their participation in all interconfessional meetings at a
“Colloquium on Bilateral Conversations” scheduled for this
June.

Last year also brought developments which have been
discouraging. The expectation of a cooperative program of
architectural counseling failed for lack of support from the
church bodies, as did the hope of providing an administra-