KENYA – On the morning of Thursday, September 14, 2022, participants in the International Lutheran Council (ILC) World Conference 2022 made an excursion to Matongo to visit Neema Lutheran College, the seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya (ELCK), where the church conference is host.
There they joined members of the seminary community for a Matin service in Swahili. The service also featured a Swahili hymn that conference participants have been learning throughout the conference: “Yesu Wangu Simwachi.” A seminary student served as liturgist as ELCK Archbishop Joseph Ochola Omolo preached on John 4, highlighting what it means to worship God in spirit and in truth. A Bible study followed on 1 Kings 8:22-30, led by Rev. Joseph Abuor, a PhD student from Kenya.
After that, the conference heard a report from Rev. Dr. Steven Schumacher of the ILC International Accreditation Agency (ILCAA). The ILCAA is a new ILC initiative that will “strengthen confessional Lutheran theological education,” he explained. The program will ensure that participating seminaries and colleges all offer robust theological training that is distinctive and transferable to other institutions of higher academic study.
In addition to providing standards for the educational program and mission and integrity of an institution, ILCAA will also provide standards for: governance, administration and finance; planning and review; faculty, education and staff; student services; and resources.
Liturgy, Theology and Culture
The morning session continued with the third of four keynote presentations on the conference theme. Rev. Dr. Joseph Tom Omolo, Principal of Neema Lutheran College, delivered a lecture titled “The Relationship between Liturgy, Theology and Culture”.
Dr. Omolo argued that, for Christian worship to fit appropriately into a given culture, it is necessary to “balance the local and universal natures of the Christian liturgy so that the overarching meaning in the liturgy is neither lost nor communicated in an incomprehensible way to people. .” The key to achieving this balance is careful fidelity to the doctrine underlying the liturgical expression: “the content of worship,” he explained, must remain “consistent with church doctrine and the overall Christian narrative.”
“Meaningful worship is one in which Christ’s gift of life and salvation is offered to sinful man in clear and understandable language so that people can experience this gift in an understandable way,” concluded Dr. Omolo. But when such an adaptation followed, he warned, “care must be taken that the liturgy remains Christian in its essence and purpose and continues to bear the marks of the catholicity of the church of Christ. To achieve such a balance, inculturation must take seriously the complementary dynamic between liturgy and doctrine, so that the celebration of the liturgy in different cultures takes place within the framework of Christian language anchored in the biblical narrative.
Following Director Omolo’s presentation, Bishop Juan Pablo Lanterna of the Confessional Lutheran Church of Chile (ILC-Chile) also addressed the topic of liturgy and culture, offering a concrete example in the recently published Spanish Himal produced in Latin America: Lutheran Hymnal. The hymnal was first conceived by the Chilean church 14 years ago, eventually growing to become a joint project of the ILC-Chile, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Paraguay (IELP) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Argentina (IELA) .
The new hymnal is “a contribution from the mission field to the mission field,” said Bishop Lanterna, “a contribution from Latin America to Latin America and from confessional Lutherans to confessional Lutherans.”
Indeed, continued Bishop Lanterna, the new hymn can rightly be considered the third most important Lutheran confessional edition ever published in Spanish, preceded by the classic translation of the Bible by Casiodoro de Reina in 1569, as well as the Spanish translation of the Lutheran Confessions.
The hymnal, which includes hundreds of classic and contemporary hymns, as well as offering new services for Matins, Vespers and Vespers, has been welcomed by Spanish-speaking Lutherans. Asked what impact the hymn will have, the missionaries who started the project were clear: “They answered unanimously,” Bishop Lanterna explained, that it will help Spanish-speaking Lutherans “reevaluate and discover confessional Lutheran liturgical theology.”
The morning session ended with a lunch on the workshop premises.
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Mathew Block is the Communications Manager for the International Lutheran Council. He is also the editor of The Canadian Lutheran magazine, and previously served as Communications Manager for the Lutheran Church-Canada.
