Lutheran Summer Conferences rated by potato salad

5. Issues, Etc. Making the Case conference. This conference features boxed lunches from Panera. You know what that means. No potato salad. But what the conference lacks in potato salad it makes up in everything else. You should just forget the potato salad for once and go.

4. Preus Family Reunion. I don't know if this conference has potato salad. It seems like it would, BUT you are not invited unless you are a member of the Preus family. BUT a plurality of Synod is members of the Preus family, so you might be one. If a member of the Preus family could report back about potato salad, then we'd know.

Pictures of potato salad always look gross. 
Use a plain potato instead.

3. Redeemer Family Retreat. I don't know if this conference has potato salad. There is a potluck so you might get some, but since everybody at the conference is on vacation it will probably be in a tub from the store. So not that great of potato salad, but a conference you should totally go to.

2. Gottesdienst St. Louis. The Gemütlichkeit potato salad is very, very good, except for needing more salt. If you help clean up the kitchen, you might get to take home some leftovers and then spend the whole next day eating salted potato salad. This conference was yesterday, so unless you were there, you missed it. Make sure you get there next year to eat this very good potato salad (bring or look for salt).

1. Concordia Catechetical Academy Symposium. The Augsburger Barbecue is the best Lutheran conference potato salad out there. It's the kind that isn't yellow (which doesn't necessarily make a potato salad good, but does make this the best Lutheran summer conference potato salad). I have hurt myself with this potato salad before. We haven't been to this conference in several years but the main thing that makes me want to go back there besides holy things is the potato salad.

NB: the key to having good potato salad may be giving the meal at which it is served a culturally relevant name. If we hear from a Preus we will know for sure.

Dear LadyLike: What about remaining single?

Dear LadyLike,

What do you say to a young woman who doesn't want to get married? Is this biblical? Or is it sinful? Related to this: Is there room for single adult women in the life and work of the (LCMS) church? I would really appreciate any thoughts and counsel you have on this topic. 

Dear Lady,

"I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I." 1 Cor. 7:8

1 Corinthians 7 is the go-to passage about the reasons for getting married or not getting married. The bottom line is that most people find that it is not good for them to be alone and make their way through life better if they are married. But some people do not have an inclination to marry built into them. There's nothing wrong with that.

"There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." (vs. 34)

Remaining celibate is placing one's care in the things of the Lord rather than the things of the world. That is a noble and blessed way of life. It is an act of trust and an investment in one's own spiritual well-being, and a testimony to the intrinsic value of each individual life. A secondary benefit of this is that a person who does not need to be available to an immediate family can be more available to the church.

The form that a single person's service to the church takes is wide open. Other Christian traditions have a system for celibate people to formally devote their entire lives to the church. Lutherans pretty much don't have a thing for that. Loehe's deaconesses were virgins or widows (and left deaconess work if they married), but that is no longer the case.

If this is a deficiency in Lutheranism (and I think it is in some ways, as the lack of formal recognition or position may imply that single people lack a place in the life of the church), it is made up in the Lutheran theology of vocation. A single woman doesn't have to be a nun to serve the church, or even a deaconess, teacher, or managing editor of The Lutheran Witness. She could be a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. A Christian geologist has at least as much to offer the church as a Minister of Religion-Commissioned. A person who works in a non-church-work field has a non-church-work income from which to tithe, a much better situation for engaging non-Christians than people who work in a church building all day, and evenings and weekends on which to come to church and volunteer. And if a single lady is better at cleaning gutters than she is at teaching Sunday School, that aptitude is no less valuable or welcome. Churches have gutters too.

You just plain don't have to get married if you don't want to. There are a number of costs and disciplines built into that decision. The long term benefit is having forgone the icon and its built-in distractions for the sake of preparing for the real thing: eternal union with the true Bridegroom.

Gertrud von le Fort's book The Eternal Woman includes a profound treatment of the station of virginity. I recommend it for anyone interested in the topic. I also recommend the thoughtful posts of Heather Judd at Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife.

Thanks very much for this question. LadyLike



UPDATE: After posting, I received this valuable correspondence from a reader who gave me permission to reprint it.

Single Christians serve the Church and their neighbors--and I would emphasize, they don't live for themselves.  In our secular culture, you stay single (or get divorced) in order to live for yourself.  (Or if you do get married, you avoid having children, or too many children, in order to keep more of the pie for yourself.)  Both single and married people should understand this, that in whatever state one is called, one is to serve, and we are not to judge one another in this matter.  It is not right for a person to avoid marriage simply so one can have the whole pie.  St. Paul makes it clear that the single person should care for the things of the Lord, in contradistinction to the things of the world--even if one is cleaning gutters, or making tents, for a living.  But we Lutherans should do more to honor and value the vocation of celibacy, as well as make it clear what this calling is for.  Hopefully the tide is beginning to turn in that direction.