People often ask what The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) is doing in East Africa. Here’s a snip from our catalogue of projects in Africa, one of the ongoing grants that the LCMS awards to our partner church in Uganda, The Lutheran Church Mission in Uganda (LCMU):
Lay Leadership Training (Uganda): The Lutheran Church Mission in Uganda is a young but rapidly growing church body. Because of God’s calling to the people of Uganda, the pastors of the church are each overseeing about ten congregations, sometimes quite distant from each other, which together form a parish. Those congregations are led by lay leaders who serve the church faithfully each Sunday, leading worship, praying, and preaching. The pastors and his lay leaders are crying out for a deeper and richer understanding of God’s Word and His ways among His people. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has a program for just this need, which we call the Mission Training Center Program. The Mission Training Center Program provides resources to gather those lay leaders once a month for four or five days for their parish pastor to explore, teach, and prepare them for the work God has put before them in the church. The two-year Mission Training Center curriculum enables the parish pastor to confidently entrust his congregations to his lay leaders and enables the lay leaders to confidently preach and teach in the congregation under the guidance and direction of their pastor.