Rev. John Lomperis is Director of Education and Development for Petros Network

Amidst Lutheranism’s many recent challenges, we must celebrate where faithful Lutherans continue making a great difference for Jesus Christ. 

The world’s largest, reportedly fastest-growing Lutheran denomination is the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY).  Its membership of 12 million is roughly twice as large as all American Lutherans and many more than all Lutherans in the historic strongholds of Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Iceland, and Latvia combined. The EECMY, also known as the Mekane Yesus Church, is in full communion with the North American Lutheran Church, and hosted the 2018 Global Confessional & Missional Lutheran Forum, where leaders of the EECMY, NALC, Lutheran CORE, and other faithful Lutheran bodies developed a declaration of shared orthodox Lutheran faith.

Meanwhile, Petros Network has developed a proven methodology of working with theologically orthodox Protestant denominations in Ethiopia to train and equip their church planters to make disciples and establish denominationally connected, financially self-sustaining congregations, entirely in “unreached” areas.  These are often places where people have never heard the Gospel.  On average, these new churches each plant 2.5 additional “second-generation” new congregations within a few years. 

Petros Network has launched some 200 church planters with the EECMY, one of our strongest early partners.  Together, we are seeing many members of Ethiopia’s large Muslim population come to Christ and become Lutherans.  Some Mekane Yesus church planters are themselves former Muslims.  One of this partnership’s female church planters, Kutebe, lost everything when she left Islam.  But she boldly spread the Gospel in a very difficult location, dominated by Islam and devastated by civil conflict, so that her Lutheran church plant grew from zero to 18 baptized members within just two years! 

The Mekane Yesus Church requires all of its church planters to affirm standard Lutheran doctrine (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds plus the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, Book of Concord, and Martin Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms). 

Bringing the Gospel into long-unreached areas means working in contexts of extreme poverty, malnutrition, isolation, and civil unrest.  Petros Network’s holistic approach alleviates both spiritual and physical poverty.  Through sustainably productive gardens and livestock projects, church planters are trained to multiply food security and income, training others and transforming entire communities.  For example, one Mekane Yesus church planter has led neighbors to start 16 new community gardens, through which 14 men, 18 women, and 11 children are now being trained in sustainable farming practices.  With the Mekane Yesus Church and other partners, Petros Network has trained over 17,622 individuals in sustainable farming, bringing holistic uplift that ripples through impoverished villages.

Church planters work in close connection with Petros Network’s humanitarian initiatives bringing micro-economic development, sustainable agriculture, health care, clean water, and provision for children in areas of desperate need.  One EECMY church planter helped establish a benevolent association to provide for elderly neighbors who often have no means of support.  One Petros Network women’s economic empowerment program meets in a church of the EECMY’s North-Central Ethiopia Synod.  This program benefits the whole community by equipping and training women to start successful small businesses so that they can sustainably provide for their families.  While there was much distress over the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently pulling back from this impoverished border region, Petros Network has remained there with our Mekane Yesus and other partners. 

The EECMY has further suffered severe financial limitations after its faith-filled decision to break longstanding ties with the national leadership of the Church of Sweden and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), over these former partners’ unrepentantly liberalized approach to Scriptural authority and marriage. 

Despite many challenges, our Mekane Yesus brothers and sisters remain eager to make the most of what resources are available to continue spreading the love of Jesus and growing confessional Lutheranism among some of the poorest, remotest corners of the planet.  As they pursue their holy mission, they welcome greater connections with North American Lutherans who have remained orthodox. 

Rev. Wagnew Andarge shares that the aforementioned North-Central Synod, of which he is president, “is profoundly grateful for our partnership with Petros Network, which has been instrumental in helping us to advance God’s Kingdom and make disciples among unreached people groups,” but that “a great need remains, especially among those who have not yet heard the Good News, including many Muslims and practitioners of traditional religions.” 

To learn more about the Mekane Yesus Church’s fruitful partnership with Petros Network and how you can get connected, please visit www.petrosnetwork.org/Lutheran

If your church is following the three year lectionary, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday with 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10.  Officially, the pericope begins, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:20b–5:21, ESV) In light of the fact that he is addressing established Christians, what Paul is obviously driving at here is the ongoing need for even the most committed Christians to realign their lives with the will of God.  “Be reconciled” implies that these already-converted Christian believers are not in a conciliar state with God; in fact, Paul is addressing them for a third time precisely because while claiming Christian identity, they are behaving in ways inimical to God.

At a recent gathering of primarily conservative clergy, I got some hostility but engendered much more fantastic conversation when I brought up the danger of Christianity being coopted by conservative politics. In the end, everyone agreed that Christians need to be on God’s agenda first, offering critique as well as necessarily-conditional support to any ideology, political party or strategy. This is what it means to be “the light of the world” and the “salt of the earth.”

A wise mentor once told me that people’s politics are always influencing their theology, but that the great conversation that is the inner life of the church over time corrects—and when necessary, excises—the errors that people of any given time and place incorporate.  Because of the fractured nature of the Church’s communion and witness, amplified by social media, there is a real danger of these much-needed course corrections being significantly delayed or not even engaged in.

The solution to this is to heed Paul’s words to “be reconciled to God,” which is of course, what the season of Lent is all about. The difference between the orthodox Christian construal of these words and the progressive Christian one is that for the orthodox Christian, the Bible provides the content of what being reconciled to God looks like—a detailed road map for discerning where one’s life is out of sync with the life of the triune God.  Conversely, for the progressive Christian, the Bible provides abstract theological principles, but the content comes from elsewhere, sources deemed more relevant because they are more contemporary, scientific, progressive, or whatever.

The outcome of these two approaches is what yields at least some of the divisions observable in contemporary Christianity, where people united by confessional traditions like Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, etc. have radically different ideas of what makes for faithful Christian living.  While both agree for the need to reconcile ourselves to God, one group sees God as telling us what would constitute alignment with God, the other believes that God is “just” or “forgiving” or “love,” but asserts that what those words mean is not what Christians have traditionally thought they mean, based on the witness of Scripture.

What this means in practice is that the progressive Christian lacks any tool whereby to critique their own politically-influenced positions, for they have no data by which to evaluate them.  As long as the principles they have gleaned from Scripture seem to be met by the ideologies and morays acceptable within their own narrow cultural conditioning, they are living as God intends and no reconciliation is necessary. Conversely, for the orthodox Christian, while perceiving one’s own biases is always notoriously hard, the Scriptures provide actual canons against which to measure cultural assumptions and political prescriptions… and the exhortation to do so.

Paul goes on, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” It is important that we not consign the persistent warnings of the New Testament about spiritual disqualification to the dustbin based on our theological principles, no matter how venerable or new. We can receive the grace of God in vain, and only the lifetime of persistent Christian repentance (realignment) that Luther called for in the first article of the 95 Theses can stave off that terrifying reality. So, since we cannot hope to be perfected in theology, holiness, or piety, let us be perfected in repentance, and let the Scriptures dictate to us what that should look like… furthermore, let us start today. “For [God] says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor 6:1–2, ESV)

Is your word any good? Like the Old Westerns, “My word is My bond.” We like to think we are people of our word. We make a concerted effort to follow through and do what we said we’d do. We want to be seen as straight-shooting, trustworthy folks who keep their promises.

When someone doesn’t keep their word to us we get irritated, don’t we? Of course! With politicians, we just expect them to break their promises. We are disappointed when companies break their policies, their promises. We are hurt when someone breaks their word. Broken promises break our trust.

The Bible speaks about “giving your word” as making an oath. Like the president and other officials take an oath, a promise, to faithfully execute the responsibilities of their office. An oath is a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one’s future action or behavior.

We know first, that sometimes making an oath can get you into trouble. Like when King Herod who swore an oath ended up cutting off the head of John the Baptist (Mt 14:6-10). Or the time Peter perjured himself, swearing an oath that he didn’t know Jesus (Mt 26:72).

But more realistically, we know we often break our promises. In today’s world, if something better comes along, people will do what they can to walk away from their prior commitment. We break our promises to friends, our children and our spouses. If we are painfully honest with ourselves, we admit that we are not always true to our word.

Because the LORD is a God of His Word, the church is a community where we make many promises. Every time you say the Apostle’s Creed you are making a promise that you believe in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit over every thing else. If you were married in the church you promised to make Christ an active part of strengthening your marriage. When a child is baptized, parents make promises to bring their children to worship regularly and raise their children as Christ followers. When we do Affirmation of Baptism on the Sunday of the LORD’s baptism. you make a public profession of your faith, a promise, that you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in Holy Baptism (LBW, p.201). We make lots of promises in the church. When we do, we are not making promises to the Church, but to God.

And we know. We break our oaths to God. Although we expect God to be faithful to us, we make excuses for why we are not. We rationalize why it’s okay to break our oath, our covenant, with the LORD.

We should know that God holds us to our word:

“When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.” (Num 30:2, see also Deut 23:21, Ps 116:14)  

And again:

“ When you make a vow to God, do not delay fulfilling it; for he has no pleasure in fools. Fulfill what you vow.” (Eccl 5:4, see also Ps 22:25, 50:14, 66:13.14, Ezek 16:59 and Matt 5:33-37)

Yet, God makes a way for us sinners who don’t keep our word, who don’t stay true to the Word. Even though we distrust and despise his WORD, the LORD is always faithful. Even if we are faithless, he remains true. (2 Tim 2:13) Our God is a God of His Word. “For no word from God will ever fail.” (Lk 1:37) The LORD swears an oath on His own glory to be our God and to be with us (Deut 29:12-13, Deut 31:23). So, the LORD sends His Word in the Flesh. The Word and Promise of God is incarnated in Christ who willing takes up the Cross. The Word in the Flesh takes on all our unfaithfulness upon the cross to give us God’s Word, give us God’s faithfulness.

God makes a way for us oath breakers so that by trusting in the Word Made Flesh we are made faith filled. As we trust in the Promise Giver and Promise Keeper, we are empowered to walk in his Word. We become the faithful in Christ.

May the LORD’s unfailing love, your salvation, come to you, according to His promise. (Ps 119:41)

Your servant in the Gospel,

Pastor Douglas

“For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.  Today, if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,  As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, “When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work.”  (Psalm 95:7-9)

You are the One Lord through whom all things have their being.  Guide me according to Your never-changing mercy to live into the life to which You call the faithful.  You know our ways and the testing that happens amongst those who rebel.  Lead Your faithful to not be in rebellion, but to willingly come into Your presence and walk humbly before You, the Maker of all things.

Our hearts have been hardened, as they had been amongst the people of old.  Lead me, O Lord, in the way of righteousness that I would not live with a hardened heart, but with one that is filled with Your peace and kindness.  Guide me in the way You would have me go that I may walk upright in Your sight and live according to Your will.  Keep me from those who would lead me astray.

Lord Jesus, You are the example of the godly life.  You have come and set us free from the recompense of sin and the death that it brings.  Lift me up to walk with You by my side that I may now and always live according to Your Word.  Help me this day to see more clearly the way You would have me go and then empower me to walk as You would have me walk in this world.  Amen.

“It shall be established forever like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful.” But You have cast off and rejected, You have been full of wrath against Your anointed.” (Psalm 89:37-38)

The promises of the Lord are everlasting. Though many fall away and go their own way, the Lord remains faithful. You who have been called by the Lord, why do you not heed what you have heard? Come then and know the goodness of the Lord and walk in His ways. Do not waver or fall into the way of the wicked. Do not tarry, thinking yourself exempt. Come back to the Lord and know life as it is to be lived.

Lord, I do waver and think that I can walk as others walk. I am polluted by the wickedness of this world that calls evil good. Clear my mind and thoughts to walk in Your ways always knowing that only in You can I find what my heart longs for. Guide me to walk with and in You always that I may now and forever remain in Your presence and live out Your purpose.

Thank You, Lord, for providing the way of salvation. Guide me, Savior, in the way I should walk. Help me to remain humble and faithful to the calling You have given me that I may now and always walk in Your ways and live according to the purpose for which I have been created. Now and always lead me in the calling of salvation You have put before me that I would learn faithfulness. Amen.

“But I will not break off My lovingkindness from him, nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. “My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of My lips.” (Psalm 89:33-34)

The Lord has promised to never break His covenant. Many go the way they will, but the Lord is always faithful. He holds out His hand of mercy for those who will take it. His grace endures and in love He offers salvation. Though your sins be as scarlett, come to the Lord, know His goodness and receive His forgiveness. Know that the Lord who is faithful will teach you to be faithful in the love He grants by grace.

Lord, when things do not go as I think they should I fear and wonder where You are. Your promises are sure and Your presence is real. It is I who is far off. It is I who is distant. Bring me close to see that You are always there. Lead me in the way I should go that I may now and always walk in Your ways and know the goodness of Your mercy. Lead me, O Lord, that I may follow.

Holy Spirit, You are always calling. Lord Jesus, You have paved the way. Father in heaven, Your goodness is ever present upon the earth. Help me to walk this day humbly in Your presence and know that in Your grace alone is the hope of all people. In You alone will the promise be fulfilled. Lead me, O LORD, that I may now and always walk in the way of faithfulness and live in Your mercy and grace. Amen.

“I have found David My servant; with My holy oil I have anointed him, with whom My hand will be established; my arm also will strengthen him.”  (Psalm 89:20-21)

The Lord has appointed those whom He will use for His service.  It is as the Lord determines.  Do not fret over the appointments of the Lord, but walk humbly in His ways and be glad that He has given You His word.  Live into the hope of your salvation knowing that the Lord has accomplished it.  The Lord is merciful and kind, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Lord, lead me through the troubles that each day brings.  Guide me according to Your goodness to see the hope of glory that You give.  You will appoint whom You will appoint to positions of leadership.  Guide me in the way You would have me go and grant that I be content in whatever circumstance You grant me to live.  You are God and there is no other.  In You alone is there hope.

My God and my Savior, guide me to walk humbly with You this day knowing that all things are in Your hands.  Help me now and always to see in You the hope of glory You have provided through the grace and mercy that You purchased by Your blood shed for me.  Lead me to do those things which are pleasing in Your sight.  May I be faithful this day, being guided in Your Holy Spirit.  Amen.