Mission Focus:  LCMS World Missions 

LCMS World Mission Strategy in Africa             

A missionary plants a church in an African village; the chief and elders promise that people will be there on Sunday to hear what he has to say. Only a handful shows up. Six months later, the church has grown and some of the local people have assumed leadership positions, but the bulk of those in the community still haven’t heard the saving message of the Gospel.           

What can we do differently? 

For African people, life is a unity. Such life issues as politics, economy, social realities, and spirituality all are interconnected—woven together like a rug or wrapped up as tightly as a ball of yarn.             

“If you wish to reach the soul of an African, you cannot neglect the daily ritual of life,” notes our regional director for Africa, Dr. Paul Mueller. That explains why our strategic emphasis for Africa is to reach people through human-care ministries.           

            A year after planting a church in that village described earlier, a clinic is opened. It offers immunizations for children, a nutrition workshop and immunizations for pregnant mothers, and basic health care through a mobile unit that visits the surrounding area. In three months, the lives of thousands of people, helped in numerous ways, have been touched—with a healing hand, yes, but also with the lifesaving Gospel of Jesus Christ.         

            Combining human-care activities and Gospel proclamation provides many exciting opportunities and creative methods in Africa for reaching lost souls for Jesus Christ. LCMS World Mission is identifying places where human care and evangelism can be brought together in a complete missional strategy.           

            Missionary Training Centers scattered throughout Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania offer the opportunity to implement such a strategy. Guinea’s local lay-preacher teaching sites offer the same possibilities.           

            In Ethiopia, this concept is beginning to take root. An Ethiopian agriculturalist is working with individual farmers. He gives them one ox, a yoke for two oxen, and the money to buy hybrid seed and the tools to farm. They are required to find someone to supply the second ox, and sell the harvested crop after the end of the growing season to purchase their own second ox. The seed produces more than enough to purchase the ox and supply food to the family for the remaining year. As a result of this caring ministry, people are meeting Jesus as well, for the people managing the ministry intentionally point those they help to the cross.           

            Similarly, in Sierra Leone a missionary is training and developing the lay preachers to manage their soil and crops in a more productive manner while instructing them in scriptural understanding of the need to take care of this planet and the resources God has given to us. As a result, the crop produced is generous—and the thanks is given to God who supplies.           

            In Africa, Ablaze! touches are being multiplied over and over again through the strategy of combining human-care initiatives and Gospel proclamation. Lives will be changed, as a result, because God promises that His Word will accomplish its purpose—by His grace, giving the gift of forgiveness and eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. 

[Written by Dr. Robert Roegner and Rev. David Mahsman and published in the June 2006 Missionary to Missionary newsletter for missionaries and alumni.]