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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 11

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

MISSIONS li

other cannot of course be pinpointed neatly by a 20th-
anniversary celebration. Yet no one can fail to notice
that both the inner dynamic and the outer shape of the
mission of God’s church in New Guinea has changed and
will change more. If the former era could be described
as a sending operation of a church far away —a conquest
of new territory—the present era is one of a resident
church growing up, attempting to be God’s ‘“‘letter’’ to
its own environment.

The past biennium in New Guinea has been a period
of consolidation and national church formation. The
New Guinea Lutheran Mission— Missouri Synod, work-
ing conjointly with Wabag Lutheran Church elders and
evangelists, had inevitably assumed a dominant role
in carrying forward the evangelization and indoctrination
of Highland peoples. The mission had called evangelists,
teachers, medical personnel, and agriculturalists from
America and Australia and assigned them to urgently
needed tasks. Now the Wabag Lutheran Church increas-
ingly determines where men are needed and to which
tasks they should be assigned. Missionaries and Engas
are wrestling with new ways of understanding their
common work. Together they are the church in that
place. The NGLM-—Missouri Synod will soon confine
its task (as an organization) to missionary affairs related
to the maintenance of a large expatriate staff —a staff that
expresses its evangelistic concern as members of the
Wabag Lutheran Church rather than as agents of a
foreign mission.

c. A Gospel to Live By. As congregations multiply
and the initial enthusiasm for Western ways and for the
Gospel wears off, the Wabag Lutheran Church is faced
with many problems. Enga youth are tragically caught
between the old tribal order (which they reject) and the
emerging ‘‘educated” order (which they can’t quite
reach or which often rejects them). The breakdown of
tribal sanctions governing all of life and morals proceeds
faster than the growth of the new dynamic of love and
obedience in Christ.

In order to understand better some of the dynamics
of cultural change in New Guinea, Rev. Ted Westermann
spent more than 3 years there engaged in anthropological
research —studying the effects of change brought on in
the Enga value system by the impact of white man’s
culture. This study was in part made possible by the
Missouri Synod’s Committee for Scholarly Research.
By reporting in detail to the mission and by involving
missionaries themselves in field observations at many
points, Pastor Westermann helped missionaries to be-
come more aware of gaps in New Guinean understand-
ing of the implications of the Gospel for all of New Guinean
life.

Missionaries are earnestly seeking ways to minimize
the negative effects that a large expatriate staff and its
activity inevitably generate. And they are particularly
concerned about proclaiming the Gospel through means
that communicate in cross-cultural situations. We have
sometimes been so intent on ‘‘doing our thing’”’ that we
have tended to produce carbon copies of ourselves and

our systems rather than letting the Gospel be free. We
are always challenged by the parable of the seed that
must die before it springs forth again with new life, in
new local shapes and styles.

d. Multiplying Ministry and Mission. Missionaries
are trying to equip. New Guinean leaders and ministers
to work with Biblical tools and ‘‘do”’ theology according
to their own genius. The Wabag Lutheran Church spon-
sors a vernacular church-workers school (known as
St. Timotheo Seminari) at Birip, halfway between Wabag:
and Wapenamanda. Elders and evangelists study at
Birip for 3 years, going out between their second and
third years for practical work. The Wabag Lutheran
Church jointly operates Martin Luther Seminary at Lae
(on the coast) with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of
New Guinea. Dr. Willard Burce of the NGLM — Missouri
Synod serves as seminary president. Through the LWF,
Dr. Martin L. Kretzmann was instrumental in planning
the seminary program, carried on primarily in English.
Dr. A. C. Repp of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, spent
the latter half of 1968 as instructor at Martin Luther
Seminary and assisted the faculty in developing a curric-
ulum suited to New Guinea conditions.

Missionaries and New Guineans spend much time
equipping and leading other New Guineans to a higher
level of education and a greater number of practical
skills. Each learning situation provides an opportunity
for people-to-people encounter—and therefore also an
opportunity for growth in Word and Spirit. This process
of interacting in a whole-life situation goes on at many
fronts. There are two full-time agricultural missionaries
working in the Wabag Lutheran Church; a local market-
ing corporation called Waso has been set up and is
flourishing: and missionaries advise and assist many
New Guinean private business and community activities
along with their work of proclaiming, instructing, and
encouraging in the Gospel.

e. Christian Education. Training New Guinean
teachers in sufficient number to increase the hope of
other New Guineans acquiring even a minimal education
has been a slow process. From the beginning of formal
education agencies in the Highlands (about 15 years ago),
steady progress has been made in establishing schools to
provide the teaching force of tomorrow. Initially, how-
ever, schools had to be taught by expatriates; and there-
fore we have been able to reach fewer than 10 per cent
of the school-age children in the Wabag area. To prepare
New Guinean teachers, the NGLM — Missouri Synod and
the Lutheran Mission New Guinea (comprising mission
interests of the American Lutheran Church, Neuendet-
telsau, and the Lutheran Church in Australia) have
established Balo Teachers College at Lae, capabie of
accommodating 400 students in a 2-year course. Students
receive government stipend.

A few students from the Wabag Lutheran Church
have made their way through 7 years of grade school
and 3 years of high school and have become teachers.
In two or three years we will have large numbers of