Official Workbook PDF page source text

2026 Convention Workbook 25

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 region in showing mercy to their communities, just as our missionaries 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 responses to typhoons, floods, fires, and famine. In all of these cases, the response is administered through the local church body and its congregations, 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 supplied 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 participants, 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 malaria. 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. Locating 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 program 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 people 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 congregation 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 purchase and delivery of Bibles. For example, refugees who are living 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 outreach programs, including prison ministry.

The OIM Africa region supports the purchase of motorcycles for pastors and evangelists to reach new mission areas where churches 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 seminary, church officers, missionaries, LCMS seminary professors, or LCMS pastors. This triennium, the Africa Luther Academy program included the following courses: “Worship, Hymnody, and Liturgy” 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 edified, 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 established 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. Districts, 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 efforts of these church bodies and our missionaries through shortterm 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,