LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1975, Page 283

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HIGHER EDUCATION 283

developments in education and the accompanying problems
facing the synodical institutions. Included in the survey was
a study of the tendency of the institutions to adopt techniques
and methods without examining the basic underlying philos-
ophy or the needs of the Synod for pastors and teachers. Many
of the administrative, curricular, and financial problems con-
fronting the Synod’s higher education system required further
detailed study and resolution.

The survey authorized by the 1941 convention was par-
ticularly concerned about the quality of offerings at the small
junior colleges and the apparent fact that the large number
of junior college programs was unnecessary to provide the
Synod with the number of graduates necessary to fill its needs.
Among specific items with which the survey commission con-
cerned itself were the following:

1) greater synodical use of the educational facilities at Val-
paraiso;

2) the feasibility of pretheological students completing col-
lege work at Valparaiso before entering the St. Louis
seminary:

3) the possible amalgamation of Concordia Teachers Col-
lege, River Forest, and Valparaiso University;

4) the increase of general education at synodical schools;

5) coeducation in Concordia College, Fort Wayne, and Con-
cordia College, St. Paul;

6) proposed consolidation of St. Paul’s College, Concordia,
Mo., St. John’s College, Winfield, Kans., and Concordia
Teachers College, Seward, Nebr.; and

7) the need for immediate construction at Concordia Col-
lege, Portland, Oreg.

The original recommendations of the survey included closing
St. Paul’s College, Concordia, Mo., Concordia College, Portland,
Oreg., and the Concordia Theological Seminary at Springfield.
Public hearings subsequently altered the recommendations
with respect to Concordia College, Portland. The remaining
two recommendations to close schools were not found accept-
able by the convention.

By 1947 the Missouri Synod was the only major Protestant
denomination not requiring college graduation for admission
to its seminaries. This presented difficulties for chaplains en-
tering military service and for pastors pursuing graduate work
at other colleges and universities throughout the country.
Additionally the junior college—seminary route did not meet
the requirements of higher education in American life.

At the centennial convention in 1947 the establishment of
a senior college for the upper levels of college education for
ministerial students was approved. The exigencies of academic
and budgetary considerations pointed towards a new single-
purpose institution focusing on academic excellence, growth
of spiritual maturity, development of leadership qualities, in-
stilling love for the work of the parish pastor, and developing
loyalty to the church. One new institution was preferable to
converting four to eight faculties to the full implications of the
ministerial education, and budgetary and facility costs involved
were felt to be prohibitive. Concordia Senior College opened
its doors in 1957 as a completely new institution for ministerial
education. The new Senior College was a culmination of 18
plans studied by the Board for Higher Education to provide
a way for accreditation of ministerial graduates.

The need for accreditation in order for the synodical junior
college program to be acceptable in American society, together
with the desire of congregations and individuals to provide
Lutheran high school education in the local communities, re-
sulted in a transformation of junior college academies operated
by the Synod. The junior college offerings had to be expanded
to meet this need. As alternatives became available, parents
declined to send their sons away to a synodical high school,
and the costs of operating many of the synodical high schools
became prohibitive. Consequently all but four were closed
during the period from 1966 to 1973.

The General Education Student in the LCMS

With the exception of St. John’s College, Winfield, Kans.,
and Concordia College, Conover, N.C. (no longer in existence),
all preparatory academies and colleges were founded or came
under synodical control as institutions for the purpose of pre-
paring students as pastors or parish school teachers. However,

contrary to what many seem to believe, the Synod has a long
history of general education offerings of one kind or another.
Concordia College, Bronxville, began preparing general high
school students as early as 1908 and expanded its high school
curriculum to include general courses in 1919. The Synod
authorized the college division, begun in 1936, to accept women
in 1939. Concordia, Austin, and Concordia, Portland, have ac-
cepted high percentages of nontheological male students since
the 1920s. Concordia Teachers College, Seward, began accept-
ing women students for teacher training in 1919, Concordia
Teachers College, River Forest, in 1938. For many years prior
to this they admitted male students preparing for secular callings
to the extent allowed by surplus room without offering special
courses. The junior colleges at Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Con-
cordia, Mo., were the last to expand into general education,
with the colleges at Milwaukee and Concordia offering prac-
tically no courses outside the pretheological curriculum until
recently.

The expansion of the Synod’s professional schools into
general education was unquestionably motivated by the ideal
of serving Lutheran members by educating their children in
a Christian environment and of serving the church by training
a consecrated laity. However, it appears that the great urge
of many of the pretheological schools to expand into secular
education was precipitated, in part at least, by very practical
considerations. The depression years of the 1930s brought heavy
declines in enrollment and, consequently, overstaffing, vacant
dormitories, and uncollected student’s accounts. Under this
emergency, self-preservation became a dominant consideration,
and the fusion of ideals and practical needs largely directed the
educational system to accept general education students.

In 1938 and 1941 delegate conventions authorized the Synod
to experiment in general education and coeducation in synodical
colleges in geographical areas not yielding enough ministerial
students to engage the full-time use of the facilities available.
The obvious solution to operating at capacity would be to re-
cruit ministerial students to fill the schools, but this was not
deemed possible or necessary because of the “oversupply” of
ministerial students at that time. The acceptance of a limited
number of students for general education and coeducation was
considered to be on an experimental basis but was introduced
without specific study of the status or character of the schools
and their effectiveness.

The 1944 synodical convention resolved that the Board for
Higher Education actively support general education on the
high school level. The Synod had declared its policy of encour-
agement to congregations to establish independent Christian
high schools and instructed its boards to survey the most prom-
ising fields to assist in organizing congregations or individuals
to support Lutheran high schools and, wherever feasible, also
junior colleges. However, the Synod would contribute no funds
for the erection and maintenance of such high schools and
junior colleges.

The 1944 convention also reaffirmed the basic purposes of
its seminaries, academies, and colleges as being the training
of pastors and teachers. It determined, however, to continue
allowing the limited use of its buildings for the general high
school education of boys at Austin, Bronxville, and Portland,
and for boys and girls at Edmonton, Oakland, and Winfield.
At the college level general education was reaffirmed for men
at Edmonton and Oakland and for men and women at Bronx-
ville and Winfield. The convention encouraged each school to
adopt a cost-accounting system for analyzing costs related to
nontheological students and recommended that an agreement
be developed between each school and the Synod for payment
of excess costs related to general education instruction.

The Board for Higher Education survey results reported
to the 1944 convention had clearly indicated that the command
to teach or to educate was to Christians gathered in local con-
gregations. The human organization, the Synod, as a voluntary
organization of congregations, is organized to do those things
jointly that cannot be done more effectively and efficiently by
individual congregational effort. Consequently, the Synod’s
efforts in the area of specialized education are solely dependent
on the support and authorization of its member congregations.

LCMS Higher Education Compared with That of
Other Lutheran Bodies

The experience of The Lutheran Church-— Missouri Synod
in higher education is substantially different from that of other