# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S346
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 132 —

especially where love for one's own family requires it; for there
stands God's clear word, 1 Tim. 5:8: "But if any provide not for his
own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the
faith, and is worse than an infidel." — For their services the
deaconesses may not demand personal wages. The home compensates
them according to their need; it also receives all incoming funds and
administers these in the interest of its members.

What, then, moved the representatives at this conference to plan
such a Lutheran deaconess home? Not a busy craving for novelty, but
the crying need that is quite palpably felt in many places among us
for such deaconesses, above all in our own Lutheran hospitals, to
which our Lutheran nursing schools are attached. How often is a
shortage of sufficient female help felt there! How often it is so hard to
win a trained, skilled director of the hospital, animated by a Lutheran
spirit, and matron of the nursing school! When our hospitals, at great
effort and expense, have trained their nurses for their profession over
a three-year apprenticeship, they then leave the hospital and devote
themselves to private nursing; the experience gathered here by them
and their valuable services are thus usually lost to our hospitals. —
Furthermore, there are many Lutheran families of modest means who,
when illness strikes and an experienced nurse is needed, cannot afford
the high fees that trained nurses demand nowadays. How often does it
happen among Lutheran families that, in cases of severe, dangerous,
contagious illness in their midst, an Evangelical or otherwise Protestant
deaconess, or even a "merciful" (?) Catholic sister, is called, simply
because no Lutheran nurse is to be had so cheaply! What temptations
and dangers for the state of faith of a Lutheran family arise under
such circumstances is obvious. — Finally, we also think of the
numerous nurses themselves who have gone out from our Lutheran
hospitals in recent years, who often stand without a household of their
own and are constantly exposed to great dangers to their faith and
Christian walk. How many among them would gladly join such a
Lutheran deaconess home and most willingly place their time and
strength in the service of Christian nursing, if only the oppressive
worry over daily bread and over advancing age were taken from them.

The planned home aims to remedy all these noted distresses. A
committee was therefore appointed by the above-named conference to
take the preliminary steps to realize the plan. The committee hopes to
have its work completed by autumn. For the present, such Christian
maidens and childless