I serve as the One Africa Team liaison to the LCMC Kenya, one of WELS’ partners in Africa. COVID has kept me from visiting the churches in Kenya for the last 18 months. Nevertheless, God has been giving me many opportunities to assist and support our Gospel partners in East Africa.

Online Teaching in Kenya

16 national pastors and 17 national evangelists serve 46 LCMC churches in Kenya. In 2019, eight of those evangelists began taking courses towards earning a diploma to serve their church body as ordained pastors. The Pastoral Studies Institute of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary committed funding a 3-year course of instruction that included in-person visits by WELS teachers before COVID, and online instruction since the start of the pandemic.

In December 2020 I began teaching Koiné Greek online to these students. When I studied Greek many years ago, my teachers taught me a lot of grammar in a very short time. This is a method of teaching “dead languages” that has served generations of WELS pastors well. However, it presupposes that the student has a good understanding of how grammar works.

My Kenyan students are gifted language learners and are able to speak 3-5 different languages, including English, Swahili, and local tribal dialects. However, due to their limited educational background, we decided to use a conversational approach to teaching Greek. Incidentally, teachers are using the same method at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Malawi.

Biblical Language Center is an online school for teaching Greek and Hebrew as spoken languages. The website hosts videos and quizzes that encourage students to learn the same way that children learn – by listening and repeating what they hear. Each student has an account they can access at any time during the week. I host a live session with the students once a week on Google Meet. I use the time to set the stage for a section of the video content.

For example, to teach vocabulary about farming I filled a tub with dirt and used puppets and spoons to pantomime the actions of carrying shovels, digging and planting vines. I ask the students in Greek what the puppets are doing, and they must respond with the appropriate forms of the verbs and nouns. Compared to the way I learned Greek many years ago, we are making very slow progress. On the other hand, my students are able to speak simple Greek sentences using the correct grammar – something that I never was able to do until now. They have made truly amazing progress.

Building Projects in Kenya

WELS and LCMC are also partnering to provide houses of worship for several congregations. Some congregations have been able to raise funds locally to purchase property and to begin building the walls of their churches. With funds provided by WELS donors, LCMC congregations are able to complete the construction of simple worship facilities.

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church is located in the village of Ponge, near the shores of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya. The congregation of 85 members had been worshipping in rented school property and also under shade trees. After an elderly female member of the church donated the land for a permanent structure, the group quickly began raising the walls of their new church.

Samson Mambo, one of the students currently enrolled in the diploma program, serves as the congregation’s Evangelist. He visits sick church members and prays for them. Evangelist Mambo also teaches Sunday School, leads Bible class, and preaches sermons. The congregation is made up of teachers, builders, drivers, electricians, and small-scale farmers. With the funds from WELS, the congregation completed the construction of their church walls, poured cement pillars to support the roof, cut down trees to build trusses, and purchased iron sheets and nails for the roof.

On May 23, 2021, President Mark Onunda of the LCMC Kenya presided over the dedication of the new worship facility. A large group of people from the community joined the members of St. Paul in thanking God for this new house of prayer in Ponge. You can watch a video of the celebration on One Africa Team’s YouTube channel.

There are another five churches in Kenya waiting to receive assistance in constructing new worship facilities. I thank God for the opportunity to facilitate these projects and to “hold up the prophets’ hands” (Ex. 17:12) as OAT liaison to the churches in Kenya.

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi

Please join us for Taste of Missions, an online missions experience, from July 11-17, 2021. Get to know more about WELS home and world missionaries like you never have before, and experience mission work firsthand through short video updates, live Q&A sessions, activities and recipes for the entire family, daily devotions, and a live worship service where we commission new missionaries on July 17. You may register at no cost at https://tasteofmissions.com/

This week’s post is written by Rev. Brad Wordell, a member of the faculty of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary’s Pastoral Studies Institute. He also serves as the liaison between the Commission on Inter-Church Relations (CICR) and One Africa Team. As our mission efforts continue to bear fruit in Africa, the CICR plays a vital role in establishing formal relations between church bodies on the continent and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod.

During this Easter season, we might say that the CICR stands for Christ Is Certainly Risen. It is true! Jesus Christ has risen from the dead! Our Savior is risen indeed!

His resurrection changes everything for us. Because our Savior lives, we live. We have life (peace and fellowship with God and the privilege of serving him) now and in the world to come. And our holy, Christian faith seeks to be active—in worship, in the proclamation of the Lord’s name, and in love to him and the people around us. What a blessed life we have! All praise be to our Triune God!

The members of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod are heirs of the Lutheran Reformation. We believe that the Bible is the only source of faith and doctrine (sola scriptura), that sinful mankind is saved by faith in Jesus and not by good works (sola fide), and that everything we have is a gift from our gracious God in heaven (sola gratia). We believe God has determined the times and places that we should live, and that it is his will that we proclaim his name among the nations. We believe that God works through the means of grace—the gospel in the Word, in Holy Baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper—to create, preserve, and strengthen our faith, and to produce in us the fruits of faith. We believe that the Lutheran Confessions as recorded in the Book of Concord of 1580 are a faithful exposition of the Word of God. We rejoice that like-minded Lutherans are singing Hallelujah to the Lord all around the world, and we rejoice in this blessed fellowship as we wait for the glorious return of our Savior.

The WELS enjoys this blessed fellowship of doctrine and practice with the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) in the States, and with more than 35 church bodies around the world in the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC).

In order to extend and conserve the true doctrine and practice of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod through its Commission on Inter-Church Relations (CICR) keeps itself informed on doctrinal trends in other church bodies. This commission, made up of ten members and four advisory members, serves under the Conference of Presidents and represents the synod in doctrinal discussions with other church bodies who are, or are not, in fellowship with the synod, in order to “extend and conserve the true doctrine and practice of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.” 

To accomplish this the CICR keeps itself informed on the doctrinal trends in other church bodies and works to preserve and strengthen the bonds of fellowship with church bodies with which there is complete unity of doctrine and practice. Additionally, the CICR seeks to extend the bond of confessional fellowship with other church bodies where such unity becomes apparent and to offer testimony and assistance to groups which show a desire to grow in their understanding of evangelical Lutheran doctrine and practice.

On the continent of Africa, the CICR does its work in collaboration with the One Africa Team. As a member of the CICR, I am pleased also to be a part of the One Africa Team. In 2017 we rejoiced as the Lutheran Church of Ethiopia (LCE) joined our fellowship, and in 2019 we rejoiced as the LCMC-Kenya joined our fellowship. May the Lord continue to guide and bless us all! May the good and gracious will of the Lord be done in us and through us! May His name be hallowed! May His kingdom come!

Rev. Bradley Wordell lives in Mequon, Wisconsin

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts at https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa