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International Opportunities

Luther Seminary offers a variety of options for international learning, from travel courses to global internships and study sites. For more information about international opportunities, contact Academic Affairs.

Upcoming Travel Courses

Global Church Immersion—Tanzania 

Professor Kathryn Schifferdecker
January 16–31, 2027

Experience the vibrant churches of the global south! This study course will travel to Iringa, Tanzania, to learn from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, one of the fastest-growing and largest Lutheran church bodies in the world (8.5 million members). Participate in a conference with ELCT pastors, discussing evangelism, women’s leadership, poverty and the prosperity gospel, and church-sponsored development work. Participate in the vibrant worship life of local churches and stay in rural villages for a weekend, hosted by ELCT pastors. Rest and relax at a safari camp in Ruaha National Park and on the island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. August 2026 update: Please note that registration for the 2027 Tanzania travel course is now closed.

Tanzania travel course contacts:

Germany: Land of Martin Luther

Professor Mark Tranvik
May 24–June 4, 2027

With a home base in Wittenberg, the city where Luther lived, taught, and preached for much of his life, students will visit surrounding sites of interest in Berlin, Torgau, Buchenwald, Erfurt, Eisenach, Leipzig, Eisleben, and Dresden. The course also covers the experiences of Germany in the recent past, including the Nazi period and the Holocaust, the 1989 peaceful revolution, and the issues surrounding immigration. 

Martin Luther travel course contacts:

Mission in a Post-Christian Society: Learning from the UK 

Professor Dwight Zscheile
June 5-12, 2027

British society is increasingly post-Christian, despite the church’s long history of cultural establishment there. The past few decades have brought rich creativity and dynamism as Christians have recontextualized Christian witness through a “mixed ecology” of church planting, fresh expressions, and other new forms of church within and alongside the inherited parish system. Based in greater London, we will visit a variety of local sites, meet with leaders from multiple levels of the Church of England and other denominations, and gain a glimpse of what contextual mission looks like in a post-Christian society.

UK travel course contacts:

2028 Travel Courses

  • Knowing Our Neighbors in Latin America: Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico (Professor Guillermo Hansen)
  • The Early Church and Empire in Western Turkey (Professor Matt Skinner)
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Youth Worker (Professor Andy Root)
  • Mission in a Post-Christian Society: Learning from the UK (Professor Dwight Zscheile)

International Internships

The Horizon International Internship program provides ELCA M.Div. students with an opportunity to have their ministry shaped by the witness of the world. It is an intensive and transformational opportunity, which aims to enrich the talents and skills of future rostered leaders for the ministry and mission of the ELCA. The Horizon International Internship program is an exciting collaborative venture of the ELCA service and Justice home area, in cooperation with the synods and seminaries of the ELCA. Recent Luther Seminary students have completed internships with communities in France, Malaysia, Serbia, and the United Kingdom.

For more information, visit the Horizon International Internship program website, email horizon@elca.org, or reach out to the Luther Seminary contextual learning team.

International Study Sites

Luther Seminary and the Norwegian School of Theology (Menighetsfakultet or MF) in Oslo, Norway, have had a long-standing working relationship in which students from either school are welcome to study at the other school. Luther Seminary has benefited from this relationship greatly when students from there have come here.

The Free Faculty has established programs in which only English is used, and the programs have become popular for students from an astonishing variety of countries—especially from the many lands where Norwegian missionaries have labored over the past 150 years.