One of the exciting aspects of serving Luther in this call as president is the privilege of meeting our alumni serving around the world. I continue to be amazed at the global reach and the contributions Luther has made to leadership development in member churches of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). This summer, when I was at the LWF council meeting in Geneva, it was my great joy and delight to participate in the election of a Luther alum, Fidon Mwombeki, ’97, to his position as director of the LWF department for mission and development.
Luther continues to strengthen our global reach through expansive use of our digital resources available freely to all. Our preaching and Bible study resources (Working Preacher, God Pause and Enter the Bible) are used in 230 countries and territories with a combined total of 3 ½ million visits in the past year.
Our faculty are regularly teaching, leading and listening with our partners around the globe. Associate Professor of Early Church History Lois Farag spent a week at Oxford University presenting a paper while Academic Dean Craig Koester spent time in Ephesus, Turkey, doing the same. Guillermo Hansen, associate professor of global Christianity, societies and cultures, has been called upon to think with our Central and South American colleagues what a sustainable theological education, with participation from faculty in the global south, might look like in a new era of digital education. Dirk Lange, associate dean of graduate theological education, has been hard at work coordinating the liturgical events as the global communion commemorates the Reformation in 2017.
Lange and Hansen were in Windhoek, Namibia, over All Saints weekend this year. Part of their work included facilitating conversation on global theological education. Our faculty together has done a remarkable job reimagining a new kind of Ph.D. which includes significant time in one’s own context. We are now in the process of raising the start-up and endowment funds to fully support this program. This work will continue for the next several years.
Luther’s global reach also benefits our alums serving immigrant congregations in the United States. Leaders in the global communion have things to teach us about mission, evangelism and the power of the gospel to reignite a movement of God’s Spirit in our midst.
We are blessed by our students who come from around the globe and who enrich our residential community. We are blessed by our faculty whose commitment to participating in global conversations keeps their research in dialogue with scholars around the world. We are blessed by friends and supporters who make this global ministry possible.