LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1979, Page 186

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186 LATE REPORTS AND OVERTURES

and Seattle. Topics discussed have included “What Can
We Do About Burn-Out?” “The Use of Dreams in
Counseling,” and “Grief Support Groups.”

One of the articles included in the 1979 edition of the
SPC Journalis “Hospice: A Call for Creative Care.” The
department is seeking to gather pertinent information
on the concept of hospice care for terminally ill persons,
with the intention of being a Lutheran resource re-
garding this subject. The first annual meeting of the
National Hospice Organization was held in October
1978 in Washington, D.C. Three hundred people were
expected, but 1,100 showed up. The person credited with
starting the movement, Dr. Ceciley Saunders, was one
of the speakers.

Ministry to the aging is the focus of two new
departmental programs. One calls for the creation of a
task force that will study the training and supervision
of chaplains for institutions serving the aging, with the
aim of improving the quality of such care. The other,
funded by Lutheran Brotherhood, will seek to get
pastors to come to grips with their own aging process so
that they in turn can have a more effective ministry to
the aging in their congregations. Ten seminars for 50
pastors each are to be held throughout the country
starting this summer. The seminar leaders were trained
at a three-day session in May at the University of
Michigan’s Institute of Gerontology.

Continuing education for those in specialized pas-
toral care, always a concern of the department, has been
enhanced by $20,000 grants from Lutheran Brother-
hood in 1977 and again in 1979 for individual scholar-
ships. The fourth in a series of group experiences in
continuing education will take place in January 1980,
with costs met through a $19,500 grant from the Aid
Association for Lutherans. The 150 persons expected to
attend will consider the topic “Systems, Spirits, and
Stories.”

The department has a leadership role in two newly
formed groups concerned about chaplaincy positions in
institutions of the Federal Government. They are the
Council on Pastoral Ministries in Correctional Institu-
tions and the Endorsers’ Conference for Veterans
Administration Chaplaincy. Slated to be organized by
next June by a number of church bodies and pastoral
care associations is a formal Council for Ministries in
Specialized Settings to replace the informal Interorgani-
zational Consultation, which has existed for the past
decade.

Immigration and Refugee Services

Resettling the constantly increasing flow of refugees
from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos continues to be a
major concern of the Department of Immigration and
Refugee Services (LIRS). In 1978, 3,370 Indochinese
refugees arrived in the U.S. under the department’s
auspices, bringing the total resettled since the Com-
munist takeover of the three countries in 1975 to more
than 23,000.

As of November 1978, 54,000 refugees who had
escaped by boat and 122,000 who had come by land were
waiting in various camps in southeast Asia for the

chance to start new lives in other countries. In response
to the plight of these refugees, the U.S. attorney general
has continued to use his parole authority to authorize
their admittance. Attempts are being made to change
the basic immigration law to eliminate the need to rely
continually on the attorney general, except in emergen-
cies, and to increase the annual number admitted from
17,000 to 50,000—100,000.

Assistance in processing refugees overseas is being
given by LIRS through a newly opened office in Hong
Kong. The department is administering this office on
behalf of several other refugee resettlement agencies,
with costs covered by a contract with the U.S. State
Department.

The response of Lutheran congregations to being
involved in a resettlement ministry grew dramatically
in 1978. The number of sponsors recruited went from 65
in January to 112 in December, and LIRS is working
toward a goal of 200—250 sponsors per month. Assisting
in this work is a staff person related to each church
body. Alfred Bieber, formerly with the Synod’s Board of
Stewardship, is the LCMS representative.

One of the ways the department focused on refugee
resettlement last year was through a national Lutheran
conference on Indochinese refugees held in August in
Madison, Wis. Chairman Leo Cherne of the Citizens
Commission on Indochinese Refugees told the confer-
ence that ‘“‘caring is less and less a spontaneous fact of
American community life. But those who care, care
deeply. And it is they who must be stimulated anew.
Why? Because the lives and future of others who have
suffered most is at stake. But perhaps more funda-
mentally because it is our own humanity which is at
issue. Need denied and help withheld diminishes all of
us who are unresponsive.”

LIRS arranged for Missouri Synod President J. A. O.
Preus and his fellow church-body presidents to meet in
November 1978 with the newly named United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, Poul Hartling, a
Danish Lutheran. “I have found that one of our very
best cooperating groups taking care of refugees is
Lutherans,” he said. “So I’d like to pay tribute to your
churches, your people, and this work you are doing all
over the world, not least in the United States.”

The church-body presidents are featured in a newly
produced LIRS film, “Room for a Stranger,” which uses
a documentary style to answer many of the questions
congregations ask when considering a sponsorship. A
handsome calendar related to the International Year of
the Child in 1979 and bearing the message, “‘Let the
Children Come ...!’ Sponsor a Refugee Family,” was
among printed materials produced by the department.

Details have been worked out with Lutheran social
service agencies licensed for foster care to resettle 250
unaccompanied children. At the same time the adjust-
ments of refugee children who arrived alone during
1975—76 have been the subject of a study which was to
be shared at a seminar this May in Geneva, Switzer-
land, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Committee
on European Migration.

Other LIRS resettlement programs have centered on