The Lutheran Church in Hungary

Yesterday, we stopped in Budapest, Hungary, to visit the Lutheran Church in Hungary. The origins of the Lutheran Church in Hungary dates back to the Reformation with many pastors studying in Wittenberg in the 1520s and 1530s. Several of the Hungarian pastors who studied with Phillip Melanchthon started the first Lutheran school for children in 1559 (about the same time the Old Latin School in Wittenberg was built).



We met at the headquarters of the North Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary. Rev. Tony Booker, LCMS Missionary to Prague; DCE David Fiala, LCMS Project Coordinator for Central Europe; Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, LCMD Director of Church Relations, met with Dr. Tamás Fabiny, Bishop of the North Diocese; Dr. Virgil László, Counselor to the Bishop; and Dr. Klára Tarr Cselovszky, Director of Ecumenical and Foreign Relations.



The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary has about 300,000 members, representing 3% of the population in Hungary. This makes the Lutheran Church the third largest church in Hungary, after the Reformed (20% of the population) and the Roman Catholics (60% of the population). Ethnically, the
Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary historically was composed of Germans, Slovakians, and Hungarians. After World War I, two-thirds of Hungary's territory was reallocated to other nations, significantly reducing the Lutheran population in Hungary.



Bishop Fabiny points to Martin Luther's Will, the original manuscript resides in the Lutheran Museum in Budapest.

The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary has about 300 congregations in three Districts (Northern, Southern, and Western). The church has other institutions including 37 schools with 7,000 students and 1,000 teachers. In 1971, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary introduced the ordination of women as pastors. The stated reason for this was the shortage of male pastors. Although there are theological differences between the Missouri Synod and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary, there is a desire to work together particularly in the common social issues churches in the West face such as the disintegration of the family and the changing attitudes and acceptance of homosexuality as a normal lifestyle. Another desire is to have LCMS provide theological education and continuing education in Hungary. Despite the differences, it is good for the LCMS to be in conversation with Lutheran churches that are socially and generally theologically conservative.



At lunch we were joined by Dr. Tibor Fabiny, whose expertise is hermeneutics. Over lunch Dr. Tibor Fabiny spoke fondly of the Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel whom he and his father first met in London, England, when Dr. Nagel served there as a parish pastor. He also spoke fondly of a meeting with Dr. Nagel at a Luther Congress in 1993.



After the meeting we walked around beautiful Budapest.

Below is an article on the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Hungary from the 1950s, published in Concordia Theological Monthly.

- Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, LCMS Director of Church Relations.
A NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE LITURGY IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN HUNGARY

(Lajos Jánossy, "A NOTE ON THE HISTORY OF THE LITURGY IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH IN HUNGARY," Concordia Theological Monthly, March 1954: 231-235.)

(NOTB: The Rev. Prof. Dr. La jos Jánossy, Sopron, Hungary, is one of the outstanding Lutheran liturgiologists in Central Europe. Recently the under-signed had occasion to request information from Professor Jánossy concerning the use of vestments in the Church of the Augsburg Confession in Hungary. Professor Jánossy replied with the paragraphs here reproduced. We share them in translated form with our readers in view of the extensive information which they furnish concerning a development in Lutheranism on which little infor-mation is available in English. — ARTHUR CARL PIEPKORN.)

The pure Gospel recovered by the Lutheran Reformation rapidly made a triumphant conquest throughout Hungary. In all three parts
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of the Hungarian Empire — in the so-called Kingdom of Hungary; in the areas occupied by the Turks; as well as in Erdély-Transylvania in the Eastern part of the country, which was just gradually developing into an independent Hungarian principality — the Lutheran Reforma-tion brought about a renovation of the Church in the Apostolic Gospel. In line with her conservative attitude and nature, the rich liturgical life of the Hungarian Church, thus renewed according to the standards of the Wittenberg Reformation, continued with new power, purity, and an ever more extensive use of the vernacular. On the basis of the sources one must emphasize as strongly as possible that an overwhelm-ing proportion — approximately eighty per cent — of the Hungarian, that is, Magyar, population of the Hungarian empire had adopted the Lutheran Reformation as enthusiastically as had the minority groups that had settled among us: the Germans, the Slovaks, the Croatians, and so forth. In the cities and towns where the whole population became Lutheran the Church buildings were left for the most part unchanged. Even the retention of several altars was not infrequent. On Sundays and other holy days — a total of eighty-five were observed annually—the purified Evangelical Lutheran Mass was celebrated in the morning at the high altar. It was preceeded in the early morning by matins or lauds, and vespers were sung in the late afternoon. Morn-ing and evening services were likewise conducted on nonfestival week-days. Candles, paraments, the colorful Mass vestments at the Holy Eucharist, the surplice, with stole [when appropriate], at non-Eucharistic offices, and sometimes even incense, continued in use. In the 60's and 70's of the sixteenth century 80 to 85 per cent of the entire population of the Hungarian Empire were Evangelical Lutheran! Before the renovated Church in Hungary could achieve a constitu-tionally recognized status and an independent organization, the papal hierarchy, assisted and re-enforced by the new Hapsburg dynasty, began a programmatic persecution. Simultaneously the so-called "Helvetic orientation" forced its way into Hungary during the decades referred to and began to infect the Hungarian Church, on one hand as Zwinglianism, on the other as Melanchthonianism, then as crypto-Calvinism, still later as a mild form of open Calvinism, and finally as Calvinistic Puritanism. Thus from the middle of the sixteenth century the Evangelical Lutheran Church had to defend herself on a number of fronts. Our forebears, who constituted a predominant majority in the Hungarian Diet as early as 1548, were still hoping that King Miksa I [Maximilian} would bring about a comprehensive

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reformation without breaching the unity of the ecclesiastical organism. The result was that they neglected the splendid chance of securing the freedom and the independence of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on a constitutional basis under King Miksa. The regional synods of the sixteenth century occupied themselves with establishing for smaller or larger territories of the country the pure doctrine and with the ordering of congregational life. Under these circumstances it was possible for the papal archbishop of Esztergom in the single year 1559 to drive out more than 300 Evangelical Lutheran rectors of parishes in the western and northern parts of the empire, that is, the Kingdom of Hungary, and to deprive the Evangelical Lutheran Church of a like number of church buildings. Nevertheless, in the more than 2,000 parishes in which we were able to keep possession of the parish churches, the liturgical life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church continued in full vigor. Even in the purely Magyar parishes our priests wore the full liturgical vesture at the Holy Eucharist — amice, [girdled] alb, maniple, stole, and chas-uble— and at non-Eucharistic offices and services the surplice, with or without the stole [according to circumstances]. This is amply demonstrated by visitation records from the latter decades of the six-teenth century, as well as by the Articles of Murány of 1596, the Articles of the Synods of Rozsnyó of 1592 and 1604, the Articles of the Magyar Congregational Order of Sopron of 1669, and the Con-gregational Order of Sárvár of 1576. Of particular interest in this connection is the letter of vocation which the council of the royal free city of Kassa in Upper Hungary issued in 1559 to the new Hungarian preacher and chaplain, the Reverend János Petho. Under the terms of this letter he was to cele-brate High Mass every other Sunday in the parish church of St. Eliza-beth in Hungarian in full Mass vestments "according to the colors of the season," that is, according to the church year, and on the inter-vening Sunday he was likewise to conduct High Mass in Hungarian, again in full liturgical vestments, in St. Michaers Chapel, since on these Sundays Mass was celebrated in German in the parish church. In some parts of the country the population was divided between adherents of the Roman Catholic religion and adherents of the Lu-theran religion. Where in such communities the parish church was not available for use by the Lutherans and our Evangelical Lutheran services had to be held in an emergency chapel or privately in the homes of individual members, or where we were robbed of our Evan-

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gelical Lutheran churches, the Magyar Lutheran clergymen wore only albs or surplices, both of which could still be obtained quite easily. In 1610 at the synod of Zsolna [Silein] three Evangelical Lutheran dioceses were erected in northwestern Hungary. Canon VI of this synod dispenses the Magyar priests "for certain and evident reasons" from wearing the alb. We must remember that at this period the "Helvetic orientation" was creeping in from the strictly Magyar ter-ritories into these ten counties of Upper Hungary, especially in the Danube district. The Calviniste were propagandizing energetically against liturgical vestments, particularly against Mass vestments, and our clergy in these congregations were often slandered as being Papists. Where the Magyar parishes were able to escape such dan-gers, for instance, in Western Hungary, in the counties of Sopron, Gyor, Vas, and Zala, notably under the patronage of the Counts of the Nádasdy line, our Evangelical Lutheran Church retained and used at her services in hundreds of purely Magyar parishes the magnificent "festal vesture" of historic Christianity — amice, [girdled] alb, man-iple, stole, and chasuble at Mass, and surplice, with stole [when appro-priate], at other services. With reference to vestments, the Evangelical Lutheran episcopal visitation records from the years 1631 to 1642 show that there were still more than three hundred Hungarian Lu-theran parishes in which our clegry were wearing Mass vestments according to the old prescription. With the apostasy of Count Thomas Nádasdy in 1643 we lost more than two hundred parishes and parish churches, and more than forty thousand Hungarian Lutheran rural families were coerced at sword's point into accepting the Roman Mass and the Papacy. Nor was that the only case. In that most tragic decade from 1671 to 1681, in the western part of the Empire (that is, in the so-called Kingdom of Hungary) alone, almost nine hundred Evangelical Lutheran church buildings were forcibly taken away from us. The liturgical life in these areas naturally broke down, and the clergy had to content themselves here and there, in some forest or mountain fastness or in some private home, with preaching a ser-mon and with administering the Blessed Sacrament as quickly and as simply as possible in the dead of night.

In the eighteenth century the persecution of the Evangelical Lu-theran Church was continued, particularly in the areas that had been liberated from the Turks. As late as the period of King Karel III and Maria Theresa more than three hundred additional parish churches were stolen from us. When at the end of the eighteenth century our Church gradually

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recovered her constitutional liberty, she had unfortunately become an interiorly weak Church that suffered under Reformed, Rationalist, Puritan, and Pietist influences and had no positive relationship to authentic Evangelical Lutheran Church life. Thus it happened that there was no recovery of liturgical life; that is, no renewal took place. Here and there in a few parishes — chiefly Upper Hungarian urban congregations with mixed Magyar, Slavic, and German constituencies — the wearing of the surplice, at least at the Holy Eucharist, survived. After the dismemberment of the Hungarian Empire in 1920 the use of the surplice within the present boundaries of Hungary was limited to a few places, such as the large Magyar-Slovak congrega-tion in Nyiregyháza and in the large Slovak-Magyar parish in Béké-scsaba, but in all these instances the use of the surplice was limited to celebrations of Holy Communion. Naturally, no liturgical revival followed World War II.

Sopron, Hungary LAJOS JANOSSY

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Location:Staromestská,Bratislava,Slovakia

Warsaw Meeting

We arrived in Poland to meet with the Bishop Jerzy Samiec of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland. The church today has about 70,000 members. At the end of World War II, about 200,000 Lutherans remained in Poland. Since WWII, most of the decrease can be attributed to a low birth rate and the departure of Lutherans to other countries for better opportunities. Prior to the World Wars, approximately 1,000,000 Lutherans lived in Poland.

In our conversation, we explored for discussion between the LCMS and the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland. The meeting was positive. In the evening we drove to Slovakia, for a trip to Budapest.



Important Dates between 1573 and 1919.




Important Dates between 1920 and 2002.




Old Town Market In Warsaw.




- Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver, Director of Church Relations.

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Location:Sládkovičova,Žilina,Slovakia

LUTHERANISM IN POLAND

LUTHERANISM IN POLAND



As I sit on the Last Sunday of the Church Year in the airport in Minneapolis waiting for a flight to Poland, I had opportunity to read a bit about Lutheranism in Poland. The initial reach of Lutheranism on Poland began in 1518 when some adopted the Reformation message early. Lutheranism in Poland has a sorted history of union and persecution. Before WWII, an estimated 800,000 to 1 million Lutherans lived in Poland. After WWII, the number decreased to 200,000 as reported by the Christian Century 28 August 1946.




The struggles of the Lutheran Church in Poland call to mind the Gospel Reading for the Last Sunday in the Church Year when Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36)



Below is an article by J.T. Mueller on Lutheranism in Poland from 1951.



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Mueller, J.T. “Lutheranism in Poland.” Concordia Theological Monthly (March 1951): 204–207.



Of the uncounted Christians who in Eastern Europe suffered persecution under the tyrannical rule of anti-Christian totalitarianism, Lutherans admittedly form a very large part. German, Polish, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and other Lutheran believers were subjected to almost unspeakable torments by the forces of darkness which by God's permission were unloosed during the past decades.



In England the escaped Polish Lutherans, in 1940, founded the Polish Research Center, with headquarters in London, which so far has published about a dozen brochures on the various phases of the great tribulation which Polish evangelicals had to endure. One of these, which bears the title The Protestant Churches in Poland and includes an account of the vicissitudes of Lutheranism in Poland, was added to the list in 1944. A copy of this interesting study was submitted to the writer by the Rev. W. Fierla, senior pastor and spiritual leader of the Polish Lutherans in England. It is from this instructive narrative of how Lutheranism fared in Poland that the following historical facts are taken.



Before Lutheranism came to Poland, there had been introduced into the land Protestant influences stemming from Wiclif and Hus. Hence, when Luther began his work of Reformation in Germany, he soon had ardent followers also in Poland. In 1518 the Dominican James Knade adopted Luther's teachings in Danzig, which John Laski, the primate and archbishop of Gniezno, tried in vain to suppress. In 1523 King Sigismund opposed Lutheranism, but the movement by this time had become so potent that he was unable to enforce the order which he had published against the new religion. A chief defender of the new faith was Seklucian, who in 1540 published the Augsburg Confession, which was widely read by the people because it was written in a clear and simple style. Thus the Lutheran Church in Poland very soon lost its exclusively German character, especially when it was adopted and advocated by the Polish gentry. At the Diet of Cracow, 1536—1537, the gentry demanded equal regulations for clergy and gentry, especially in the matter of military service, the secularization of the ecclesiastical estates, the limitation of dues paid to the Holy See, the safeguarding of the higher ecclesiastical offices for the gentry, and others. This shows the strength of the evangelical movement.

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However, since the wealthier Polish gentry sent their sons for the completion of their education not only to Germany, but also to Switzerland, there were infused into the Polish Lutheran movement also Zwinglian and Calvinistic elements; and owing to eminent Calvinistic teachers, the Polish gentry in many cases abandoned Lutheranism for Calvinism. In 1552 there appeared the New Testament in a Polish translation by Seklucian, who later published also his sermons that greatly stimulated the Lutheran Reformation movement. The complete Polish Bible appeared in 1563. Since it appeared in the city of Brest, it became known as the "Brest Bible." Thirty years later, in 1593, the Jesuit priest Wujek, in defense of the Romanist teachings, published his own translation under the auspices of the Roman Curia. By 1555 Protestantism had become so powerful in Poland that Pope Paul IV applied to King Ferdinand for protection of the Catholic religion in Poland against the new and false Lutheran teachings. By this time the Polish Protestants had become so active in spreading their faith that almost all Poland seemed ready to embrace the doctrines of the Reformers. In 1556 there began a movement to settle the doctrinal differences between the Lutherans and the Calvinists; but while the Protestants united to free themselves from the Roman ecclesiastical courts, the Lutherans in general were disinclined to give up their faith.



The Protestant movement in Poland was greatly threatened by the coming of Unitarian teachers who, forced out of Italy since 1542, sought new mission areas in Eastern Europe. At this time Poland enjoyed so much freedom of belief, speech, and press that it was known as the asylum haereticorum. The rapid spread of Unitarianism caused the Polish Protestants: Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemian Brethren, to publish in 1570 the so-called Consensus of Sandomir, an agreement that was political rather than religious. It was followed by The Confession, which was supplementary to the Consensus and was published by the same Synod of Sandomir. The rise and spread of Unitarianism also strengthened the Romanist Counterreformation, which directed itself with no less fury against the Protestants than against the Unitarians.



As a result of this Counterreformation the gentry largely became Calvinistic, while the masses remained Catholic. Among the gentry Unitarianism, however, found many protectors, while Lutheranism was engaged in a continuous struggle with Catholicism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism to defend and maintain its teachings. This fight for the Lutheran faith continued till the close of the eighteenth century. When in 1817 the Prussian Union was introduced in Germany, also the





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Polish Lutherans were affected, for also in Poland the United Church Movement led to the founding of a United Evangelical Church.



In 1828 a General Protestant Consistorium for the Lutherans and the Calvinists was formed in Warsaw. But in 1849 the Czar of Russia, who then administered Polish affairs in large areas, renamed this the Lutheran Consistorium, while for the adjustment of Calvinistic affairs a separate body with synodical administration was set up. Since then the spiritual direction of the Lutheran Church was in the hands of a general superintendent. In 1874 the Lutheran parishes of Poland were divided into four dioceses, at the head of each of which was a superintendent. In 1901 there was added a fifth diocese, Piotkrow. In 1897 there were about 350,000 Lutherans in Central Poland, which number far exceeded that of the Calvinists.



The effect of the First World War, 1914—1918, weighed heavily on the Lutherans in Russian Poland. Before its outbreak the Russian government ordered a mass transfer of Lutherans from Polish lands to the depth of Russia on ground of "Germanophilism." The deportation was marked by extreme brutality. But such Protestants as escaped deportation to Russia were persecuted by the occupying German forces who strove to destroy the limited independence which had been assured to the Polish Lutherans by the Russian edict of 1849.



From 1919 to 1939 Lutheranism in Poland enjoyed a period of freedom and prosperity. In 1937 the Lutherans in Poland numbered more than 600,000, while the total number of Protestants at that time was estimated at no more than 830,000.



The sufferings of the Polish Lutherans during the Second World War, however, were far greater than those during the First World War. According to Nazi philosophy, a Lutheran could not be a Pole, and a Lutheran who was unwilling to be a German must be destroyed. In agreement with this principle a sixteen-year-old Protestant boy who told the German authorities that his name had been put on the list of Volksdeutsche without his knowledge and against his will was shot on the spot. More than 10,000 Polish Lutherans were imprisoned and brutally treated because they had not voluntarily declared themselves Volksdeutsche. In the diocese of Teschen not a single Lutheran Polish pastor was left, though almost 100,000 Poles had belonged to the Lutheran Church in that area. In Lodz Gustav Geyer, a well-known textile owner, was condemned to death for refusing to enroll his name on the list of Volksdeutsche, and his factories were confiscated. When the booklet was written, the Second World War was not yet over, nor had the tribulation of the Polish Lutherans come to an end. Nor are they



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ended today. God only knows to what ceaseless and indescribable sufferings the Lutherans are subject who have fallen into the hands of their atheist Russian conquerors.



These few historical facts, gleaned from a monograph rich in details, show, however, how Lutheranism asserted and maintained itself in a land where Catholicism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism constantly waged war on it. The average student of history perhaps knows far too little of Lutheranism in Poland and the Baltic countries. It is only now when Lutheran refugees and displaced persons are telling the story of their Church and its remarkable survival in the midst of perpetual terror that Lutherans, far removed from such horrors, listen to their saga of fortitude and heroic faithfulness to their belief. The Lutheran World Federation is doing much to alleviate their hard lot in life. It also does much to instil into them a new Lutheran consciousness and a new conception of the glory of their being numbered among the thousands of followers of Dr. Martin Luther. Much of this could be sensed at the theological conference at Leicester, England, where we met some of these Lutherans who had come out of great tribulation.



J. T. MUELLER





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Location:Glumack Dr,Minneapolis,United States

'Remember your roots,' Lutherans told at Georgia conference

'Remember your roots,' Lutherans told at Georgia conference - Chico Enterprise Record
http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_21970613/remember-your-roots-lutherans-told-at-georgia-conference

PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. — A renowned British scholar cautioned some Lutheran leaders last week not to lose the “treasure chest” of beliefs they’ve inherited from Martin Luther, who led the Reformation in the 1500s.

Alister McGrath, a professor at Kings College in London, was the keynote speaker at an international conference on theology. The gathering was sponsored by the Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod (LCMS), an American denomination, according to a news release sent to this newspaper.

The three-day conference was attended by 120 church leaders who represent 20 million Lutherans in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Participants at the conference represent “more conservative” Lutheran churches, according to the Rev. Larry Vogel, associate executive director of the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations.

McGrath, although he’s not a Lutheran, described himself as having “fallen in love with Luther” because of the clarity with which the Reformation leader described the relationship between people and God. Luther said we are “justified” or forgiven because of Jesus, in whom God’s loving heart for us can be seen, McGrath said.

Vogel said McGrath emphasized the need to do more than simply repeat traditional formulas that came out of the Reformation, such as “justification by faith.” He said such language is no longer understood by many people today.

What’s needed, according to McGrath, is to translate such concepts into terms

that make sense now, Vogel said. It’s needed so that modern people will understand that “the saving work of Christ which reveals God’s forgiving acceptance is the great truth we need today in order to be able to live with confidence, peace, and joy.”

McGrath also talked about Luther’s “theology of the cross,” Vogel said. It “shows that faith in Christ sustains people especially in times of trouble and suffering. Human beings are shaped and matured not by life’s easy times, but by passing through testing and trials with faith in Christ and in his willingness to take on human suffering and death.”

At the conference, such matters as marriage and sexuality, the authority of the Bible and the church’s work of responding to human needs were discussed.

Among conference speakers was the Rev. Jobst Schoene, a retired bishop of Germany’s Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Speaking on “life together,” Schoene said, “we are linked together as Lutherans who take their confession seriously.”

He told those attending the conference, “There is still a lot to do: more exchange, for instance (in) theological discussion, exchange of teachers, of servants in the ministry, (and) the practice of intercommunion and intercelebration where there is doctrinal agreement. And if that’s missing — to work for such agreement.”

The International Conference on Confessional Leadership, as the gathering was called, was held in Peachtree City, which is about 20 miles south of Atlanta.

(via Instapaper)

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Lutheran Witness on iOS

Yesterday, Dr. Bruce Kintz, President and CEO of Concordia Publishing House, sent me a text message to come and meet him. He said bring your iPad. Go to the App Store and search for Lutheran Witness.




In the App Store, the Lutheran Witness app appears and is a free download.




After installation, the Lutheran Witness App appears in the Newsstand.



When the app starts, a person can see the issues he has subscribed to.



Once am issue is selected, the cover of the magazine with a small tool bar offering other views, page book marking, and help.



A person can click on an article in the table of contents and immediately jump to the article, or a person can see a thumbnail of individual pages and navigate via the thumbnails.



As would be expected, a user can zoom in on text using the iOS, pinch and zoom, feature.


The Lutheran Witness App has a help screen explaining the features.




Rotating he iPad horizontally presents a spread view (2 pages).

The Lutheran Witness App from CPH is a great addition to CPH's electronic resources. I encourage you to go to the App Store and download it for iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) and try it out with the free September 2012 issue of the Lutheran Witness. You can download the app from here.

Visit the CPH website to find out more information about the Lutheran Witness or to order an electronic subscription.

- Posted on 11 October 2012 by Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, LCMS Director of Church Relations

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Location:S Taylor Ave,Kirkwood,United States

Mount Tabor and Around Hawassa

After I chased a monkey out of my hotel room (at first I thought it was a cat), we visited Mount Tabor and then visited congregations around Hawassa, which is a part of the South Central Ethiopian Synod.



The South Central Ethiopian Synod is one of six synods that used to compose the Southern Ethiopian Synod. Approximately, 1.7 million people are a part of these six synods, over 500,000 people are in the South Central Ethiopian Synod. These statistics are important because the Tabor Evangelical College provides the majority of the training for pastors and evangelists in these six synods.


Tabor Evangelical College was formed by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM) in 1968. About 63 pastors were trained at Tabor between 1968 and 1977. In 1983, the communist Ethiopian Socialist Government confiscated the school's property. In 2001, the government returned then property to the EECMY and the school was reopened as a church operated high school in 2003. Today the high school serves about 700 children. In 2005, a Bible school to train evangelists was opened on the site. In 2008, a certificate / diploma program in Missions was started. Finally, in 2012, a Bachelors in Theology (B.Th) program began.



Of the 3436 congregations in the six synods that comprise southern Ethiopia, there are only 415 pastors. This means each pastor serves on average six to eight congregations. Practically, this means a congregation receives Holy Communion every 6 to 8 weeks. In the EECMY, only pastors can perform sacramental acts such as Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. The evangelists are not ordained and therefore cannot administer the sacrament. In a church body that adds approximately 500 congregations a year and that has a significant shortage of pastors, the EECMY did not "declare" an emergency and allow or license the evangelists or other lay leaders to perform the Sacrament. Instead, the focus and desire is to train more pastors to meet the demand. This is very commendable and shows faithfulness the the Lutheran Confession concerning the office of pastor.



The meager library at Tabor Evangelic College had a copy of Pieper's Christian Dogmatics, Preus' The Fire and the Staff, and Koehler's Christian Doctrine. After a tour of the campus, we departed to see examples of a small, medium, and large congregation -- as well as rural and urban.



As we left Tabor Evangelical College, we ran into Aklilu Ameje, the father-in-law to Dr. Tilahun Mekonnen, the President of Concordia College, Selma, Alabama. A small world indeed...


After leaving the college, we visited a small (more than 350 members) congregation in an urban setting. The church is poor in comparison to other congregations... So poor, that concrete or brick walls cannot be afforded. Neither can the congregation afford a pastor. The congregation is served by an evangelist and other lay leaders. When possible, the congregation borrows a nearby pastor to celebrate Holy Communion. When we arrived unannounced, people were gathered in the congregation for prayer. The Ethiopian New Year is approaching. EECMY congregations have the custom of praying the week before the New Year. The synod office gathers prayer requests from across the synod, the country and the world. Each day before the New Year, members of the congregation gather to pray. Every congregation that we visited today held prayer services. Some congregations had 5 people while others had 100 or more.


At a larger congregation, people gather for prayer before the New Year.


Next we visited Tabor Congregation, which only can be described as a "mega" church with over 6,500 members. Tabor Congregation started just 16 years ago with 250 members from the mother church in Hawassa. This congregation sends evangelists through out southern Ethiopia. We asked the congregation leaders and the Synod President if there was ever conflict between the evangelists sent by Tabor Congregation and other congregations or the synod. Both answered no. They told us that the work was done "systematically"'and in coordination with the Synod's strategic plan. After the evangelists start a congregation, they turn it over to the Synod.



We visited the Ambosa Congregation outside of the city. This congregation would represent a rural, middle class church. The congregation has about 600 communicant members, and about 1100 total members (500 unconfirmed children). Notice the building style is similar to the church's built by the Norwegians. Similar style churches can be found in Madagascar, where the NLM also was active.



All the congregations we visited were very hospitable. While we saw only a fraction if the 1,100 or so congregations in the South Central Ethiopian Synod, we have an overview of small, medium, and large congregations in both rural and urban environments. We also saw the tremendous need to train more pastors, as well as the resilience of God's people.



As we bid farewell to our hosts this past evening, we were given a gift of traditional Sidamo clothing. Thank you President Hailu Yohannes Bullka, and all the pastors, evangelists, church leaders and people of the South Central Ethiopian Synod, who showed us wonderful hospitality.

We leave Hawassa in a few hours to return to Addis Ababa so we can catch our return flight.

- Posted on 8 September 2012 by Rev. Dr. Albert Collver, LCMS Director of Church Relations.
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Location:Awasa,Hawassa,Ethiopia

To Awasa

Yesterday, we rose early and drove south from Addis Ababa to Hawassa. Along the way, we stopped at various places.



After leaving Addis Ababa at dawn, we stopped for breakfast at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant in Ziway. This restaurant featured the delicacy of raw meat, which we avoided. We did take part in other traditional Ethiopian food such as tibs and the traditional coffee ceremony.



Raw meat being prepared to be serve to restaurant guests.



We stopped at Langano Lake for lunch and coffee. There are many lakes along the rift valley. The lake above is known for its brown water and for not being infested with parasites.



Before reaching the Awassa, we visited the Arsii-Negle congregation of the Central Rift Valley Parish. This congregation is rapidly growing in a Muslim area. Currently, there are about 500 members. After last Sunday's service, the congregation tore down their old building and began construction on a new building to better accommodate the people. Next to this congregation is a missionary training center that was initially funded by the LCMS. The LCMS has in the past assisted congregations such as the Arsii-Negle congregation with tin roofs to complete the construction.



As we drive closer to Awassa, President Hailu mentioned to us that we were entering a Rastafarian area. He said do yo want to see the temple? We said sure and stopped to see the Rastafarian Temple in Shashemane, Ethiopia. Many people from Jamaica have come to Zion (Shashemane, Ethiopia).



Finally we arrived at the headquarters of the South Central Ethiopian Synod. In the SCES, there are more than 500,000 members, 1310 congregations, and 140 pastors. One of the greatest needs is for the training of new pastors. Today, we will visit Mount Tabor Regional Seminary to better understand the training needs of the SCES.



The Athanasian Creed is posted in several places in the South Center Ethiopian Synod's headquarters.



A page from the EECMY hymnal. This is the beginning of Sunday worship and is very similar to what the LCMS uses.



Teaching the next generation how to use an iPhone.

Our time here has been good and we have been received well.

- Posted on 7 September 2012 by Rev Dr Albert Collver.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Awasa,Hawassa,Ethiopia