Official Workbook PDF page source text

LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 60

2026 Convention Workbook
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OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Togo. 
D.3. Show Mercy
The OIM Africa region supports church bodies across the re-
gion in showing mercy to their communities, just as our mission-
aries each show mercy in their own contexts. In extreme situations 
of natural disaster, for example, the region collaborates with our 
experts in LCMS Disaster Response to support recovery efforts 
through local congregations. In some cases, support must extend 
from the initial response to sustain community members to the next 
harvest season. In the last triennium, the region supported respons-
es to typhoons, floods, fires, and famine. In all of these cases, the 
response is administered through the local church body and its con-
gregations, with church members and church officers intentionally 
engaging the community with mercy in close proximity to Word 
and Sacrament ministry to ensure that temporal needs are not sup-
plied at the cost of eternal salvation but that they give an opening 
for the proclamation Christ is risen, indeed!
The OIM Africa region supports the long-term development 
of agricultural systems through the long-standing Agricultural 
Consultancy team, a team of LCMS volunteers who are experts 
in farming and small business management. Through community 
engagement and a well-refined technique of bringing the commu -
nity’s own expertise to bear, the volunteers advise the community 
on long-term, inexpensive, and sustainable techniques to improve 
crop yields or adapt to environmental changes. Lessons build on 
Scripture, include opportunities for the pastor to address the partici-
pants, and are hosted by the local congregation, bringing this mercy 
project into close proximity to Word and Sacrament ministry.
The OIM Africa region supports the showing of mercy through 
long-standing projects directed toward preventing and treating ma-
laria. In the last triennium, projects directed toward malaria were 
implemented by churches in Madagascar, Tanzania, and Nigeria. In 
each case, these projects involved congregation members, pastors, 
and church officers who could point to Christ and to the church 
in the midst of addressing the suffering, grief, and loss caused by 
malaria.
 
The OIM 
Africa region supports water projects on Lutheran 
church plots and at Lutheran schools. Projects are proposed by the 
local church body according to what is most appropriate for their 
context and include shallow (hand-dug) wells, bore-hole (drilled) 
wells, rainwater collection systems, and waste/septic systems. Lo-
cating these community resources at the congregation or at the local 
Lutheran school brings community members into engagement with 
Word and Sacrament ministry at the local congregation.
The OIM Africa region supports the training of deaconesses 
through seminaries in several countries, including the notable pro-
gram at Matongo Lutheran Theological College at Neema Lutheran 
College in Chabera/Sondu, Kenya, the seminary of the Evangeli -
cal Lutheran Church in Kenya. This program receives deaconess 
students from neighboring countries and prepares them for mercy 
service. In the next triennium, deaconess programs are expected to 
be started in at least two other seminaries on the continent.
 
Finally, 
the LCMS invests deeply in the Africa region’s flagship 
mercy project, Project24/Christ’s Care for Children: Kenya. As of 
the end of 2025, the program supports 252 vulnerable young peo-
ple in primary school at nine Project24 boarding facilities across 
Kenya. These children receive holistic care and are active members 
of the local sponsoring Lutheran congregation. The local pastor 
regularly engages them with catechesis, and their daily routines 
a bag of cement at a time for mortar, they can get stuck at the point 
of purchasing trusses and tin sheets for roofing. The roof is almost 
always the most expensive part of the church building. When a con-
gregation has built the walls of their church building up to the point 
where a roof can be safely and securely attached to the structure, 
they make a request through their church body for assistance in 
roofing their new building. In the last triennium, the LCMS has 
supported roofing projects in Guinea, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, 
and Ghana. 
In specific contexts where a family is unable to purchase Bibles 
due to lack of availability, the OIM Africa region supports the pur-
chase and delivery of Bibles. For example, refugees who are liv-
ing far from their home country in refugee camps and settlements 
are not able to purchase heart language Bibles in the camps. The 
LCMS purchases Bibles in those languages and transports them to 
the camp or settlement for use by the church and its members. OIM 
Africa has also supported the purchase of Bibles for specific out-
reach programs, including prison ministry. 
The OIM Africa region supports the purchase of motorcycles for 
pastors and evangelists to reach new mission areas where church-
es are being planted. In combination with OIM Africa’s short-term 
teams focused on door-to-door visitation, such access and efforts 
support the work of planting Lutheran churches. 
Under the umbrella of Africa Luther Academy, conferences for 
church workers provide the opportunity for pastors or deaconesses 
to gather for time in the Word, encouragement, and collaboration 
with lectures presented by professors from a Book of Concord sem-
inary, church officers, missionaries, LCMS seminary professors, 
or LCMS pastors. This triennium, the Africa Luther Academy pro-
gram
 included the 
following courses: “Worship, 
Hymnody, and Lit-
urgy” in Rwanda, Togo, Francophone Africa, and the DRC; “Rec -
onciliation Through the Lens of the Small Catechism” in Rwanda; 
“Law and Gospel” in Zambia and Benin; “The Office of Pastoral 
Ministry” in Rwanda; “Preaching” in Zambia; and “Hermeneutics 
and Homiletics” in Kenya. These conferences address theological 
topics with practical application, intended for participants to be edi-
fied, engaged, encouraged, and to have both content and confidence 
to immediately bring their experience to bear in their communities, 
proclaiming, Christ is risen, indeed!
 
In support 
of the planting of churches and formation of church 
workers for those churches, the OIM Africa region has estab-
lished four new FOROs around the work of Lutheran Theologi -
cal Seminary in Pretoria, South Africa; the Confessional Lutheran 
Church-Malawi Synod; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Er -
itrea; and LMA-STH in Rwanda. In each of these countries, the 
focus is on bringing salvation to every people and nation as we 
spread the Gospel, plant Lutheran churches, and show mercy. Dis-
tricts, congregations, RSOs, and individuals of the LCMS attend 
our annual FOROs to receive reports, attend worship if the FORO 
is gathered around an altar and pulpit fellowship sister church, 
study theology, visit mission sites, and prayerfully support the ef-
forts of these church bodies and our missionaries through short-
term teams, vocational opportunities, and financial contributions. 
These FOROs join other collaborations in the region in support of 
specific projects, including the Agricultural Consultancy project, 
which rotates through countries on a three-to-five-year cycle and 
an advocacy group supporting the Evangelical Lutheran Church 
in Kenya’s Project24/Christ’s Care for Children: Kenya programs. 
In the next triennium, the region expects to establish FOROs in 
Tanzania, Liberia, Guinea, Mozambique, Ghana, the Ivory Coast,