LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2023, Page 20

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20

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS

missionaries are able to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate
in numerous mission ventures throughout this vast region. The Indian Evangelical Lutheran Church is the oldest partner and the first
overseas mission of the LCMS, which began over 125 years ago.
Other established church partners include the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (SELK) and the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Latvia (LELB). These stand out as prominent
partners with LCMS OIM Eurasia, as they are larger church bodies
of the region who have grown to the point of being able to carry out
foreign mission work of their own in Africa, Asia, and other countries outside of Germany. Even smaller established churches like
the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF)
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania (ELCL) have
been active in mission in places like Japan, Belarus, and Russia.
A heart for mission work is alive and well among our Eurasia
regional partners, and much of this zeal has been fostered and encouraged by LCMS missionaries who have and continue to help
spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through on-the-ground gathering
into the harvest lost souls by church planting, by the formation of
national pastors in the fields where they work, and setting a faithful
example through acts of mercy coupled with Word and Sacrament
ministry and Lutheran identity.
The Eurasia region has been blessed with ever more doors being
opened to us by the Lord, enabling us to undertake numerous new
church plants in countries and fields where the LCMS has heretofore never worked. Thanks be to God! And thanks be to God for our
faithful missionaries, whom God has called into this service.

C.1. Spreading the Gospel
C.1.a. Through Theological Education
Bringing the Gospel to the lost is often a matter of recognizing a
door being opened to us by the Lord. In a region as large as Eurasia,
spanning 13 time zones, there are more mission opportunities than
anyone could undertake. How do mission opportunities present
themselves that drive the region to consider gospel outreach here
or there? One of the main ways in Eurasia is regular and various
Lutheran theological conferences held in strategic locations in the
region. These are promoted through the miracle of technology, by
which information can be so widely disseminated. Participants attend from far and wide. Relationships are formed, and out of this,
new mission work is planned, fields are opened, and missionaries
are sent.
Currently, OIM Eurasia plans, supports, and/or participates in
numerous and varied regional conferences aimed at enhancing
theological education and pastoral formation.
Since last convention, OIM Eurasia has embarked on an ambitious project of forming a regional seminary for pastoral formation.
The purpose for this project stems from the need for training pastors in an institution that is decidedly Lutheran. Most of the Eurasia
partner churches cannot provide a graduate level theological education for pastoral formation. The options for study are, for the most
part, secular universities or ecumenical seminaries, which are actually worse, due to the heterodoxy espoused in them. EU law now
makes a provision for colleges of member countries, accredited
in their own countries, to receive EU-wide accreditation by offering their curriculum in English. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,
when this law took effect, the Eurasia office and the bishop responsible for theological education in the LELB (Latvia) began to discuss a plan to establish such a regional residential seminary in collaboration with the Luther Academy of Riga, an already accredited
2023 Convention Workbook

institution in Latvia. OIM Eurasia is providing the human resources
and funding to add a BTh professional degree program in English
(somewhat like the old BDiv offered by U.S. seminaries until the
shift to the MDiv degree), which can be accredited throughout the
EU. However, with the outbreak of COVID-19, the project hit a
wall. The choices were (a) close down the project or (b) pivot to
a hybrid program of online learning with biannual live intensive
courses plus extensive mentoring of the students on their respective
fields by LCMS missionary pastors or pastors of partner churches,
with the goal of returning to the residential seminary concept once
the pandemic would end. The choice was the latter. While online
learning has its own difficulties, it has attracted more students than
expected, and from areas of the region unexpected under the original residential seminary plan. While the program is still very much
a work in progress, the BTh program in English has begun and
has attracted students from over 12 countries of the Eurasia region.
Now that COVID-19 is over, plans for the residential seminary with
an online option, where necessary, are again underway. A qualified
team of missionary theological educators has been called for this
work and are pressing forward in training future pastors.

C.1.b. Through Literature and Publishing
OIM Eurasia is also active in the translating and publication of
Lutheran literature. It collaborates with Lutherova společnost (The
Luther Society, a Czech NGO dedicated to promoting the theology of Dr. Martin Luther through conferences and publications of
Luther’s Works and other works dealing with the theology of the
Lutheran Reformation). This organization translates works into
Czech and publishes several books per year, including works of
Martin Luther, a Sborník (similar to the LCMS CTQ), and various articles and papers delivered at conferences organized by the
Luther Society.
OIM Eurasia is also involved in translating works of partner
churches and their theologians, for example, works of Rev. Dr.
Darius Petkunas, PhD habilitatus, of the ELCL (Lithuania) on the
history of Lutheranism and the development of Lutheran worship
practice from the Reformation through the Prussian Union. Work
with the Lutheran Heritage Foundation on translations in Russian,
Romanian, Czech, and other regional languages is yet another collaboration for which the region is grateful. And finally, the region
is currently working on the development of the Lutheran liturgy in
Ukrainian, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian, and Italian, with
hopes of soon adding modern Greek.

C.2. Planting Lutheran Churches
St. Paul wrote to his missionary protégé Titus: “This is why I
left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order,
and appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). This
is the pattern of church planting laid out in the letters of Paul and in
Luke’s Acts. It is the pattern we continue to follow in OIM Eurasia.
Currently, the region has missionary church planters—LCMS, Alliance, and Indigenous, both clergy and lay—in the following countries: Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Asian Georgia, Russia (now evacuated due to the Russia’s war against Ukraine), Ukraine (evacuated
due to the war in Ukraine), Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania,
Moldavia, Italy, Spain, Germany, Iceland, and Latvia. (cf. detail in.)
There have been several developments that have impacted Eurasia church planting. COVID-19 put restrictions and limitations on
missionaries. Some had to leave their country of service and have
only recently returned. But most stayed and carried out their duties