New Partnership To Broaden Outreach Efforts: Ethiopia

MINISTRY TRAINING IN ETHIOPIA

Linda R. Buxa

The Rev. Dr. Kebede Yigezu is the founder and president of the Lutheran Church of Ethiopia (LCE). With more than three hundred members, the LCE proclaims a solidly Lutheran confession to the people of Ethiopia. The LCE’s Maor Theological College serves as a strong anchor for this heritage.

Three years ago, Kebede contacted WELS to discuss fellowship possibilities. In 2014, Peter Bur and Prof. E. Allen Sorum met with this group of believers. In September 2015, Kenneth Cherney, a professor at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and a member of the WELS Commission on Inter-Church Relations, visited Ethiopia and participated in Maor Theological College’s first graduation ceremony.

“A huge amount of amazing things are already done. The LCE is on the way to being in fellowship with the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference. Through gifts of WELS people for Maor college and seminary program, the group is stabilizing its presence by purchasing land and building the first floor of a multi-floor facility,” says Sorum.

That building will provide more ways to support this growing church body. In addition, through the world mission seminary program, a professor will visit the church in 2016 to teach a course.

“Rev. Dr. Kebede continues to meet other people in WELS, and every time he meets someone, it’s another person who is appreciative of his unconditional, confessional heart,” says Sorum.


Linda Buxa is the communications coordinator at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, Mequon, Wisconsin.   

MISSION STORIES

Read more about how WELS missionaries are working to spread the gospel in the U.S. and around the world on the WELS Missions blogs.

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Author: Linda R. Buxa
Volume 103, Number 9A
Issue: September 2016

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