July 13, 2007

SANTIAGO DE CHILE, Chile/GENEVA – "Our relations have matured, as has our cooperation with each other. The development in the spirit of ‘communio' has changed us and now we have to see where the path we have embarked upon will lead us."

The moderator of the Latin American Church Leadership Conference (Conferencia de Liderazgo – COL), Rev. Dr Gloria Rojas, used these words to describe the plan to evaluate the process of regional cooperation among the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) member churches in Latin America over the last ten years. The motion on the planned evaluation was unanimously adopted by the bishops and presidents of the region's 14 LWF member churches meeting from 16 to 20 April in Santiago de Chile, Chile.

The decision provides for an external evaluation, to be concluded by December 2007 and submitted to the next conference of church leaders at the end of March 2008 in Lima, Peru for discussion and action.

Rojas, president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (IELCH), hopes that such an evaluation will involve systematic cooperation and the regional process of growing together as a community of churches in Latin America, and that it would also result in the naming of future opportunities and tasks.

"Conducting an evaluation is important for our own process in Latin America," stated Mr Alfonso Corzo from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia. Corzo is an LWF Council adviser and represents the Latin America and Caribbean region on the LWF Renewal Committee. The outcome of the evaluation might also impact on reflection with respect to the renewal process in the LWF, "which concerns us as a global communion." The changing ecumenical environment is just as important for the renewal process as the changes in conditions and relationships within the Lutheran communion. Both have implications for the renewal process, said Corzo.

According to Rev. Martin Junge, area secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean in the LWF Department for Mission and Development (DMD), it is most important "that the LWF member churches in the region understand themselves as churches in a common process, and that they seek to analyze this with professional assistance, in order to further deepen the process." Certainly this evaluation constitutes a challenge in terms of its methodology and yet, in Junge's view, it contains a significant potential for further implementation of the decision of the 1990 LWF Eighth Assembly in Curitiba, Brazil in: that the LWF member churches should understand themselves as a communion.

At their meeting in Santiago de Chile, the bishops and presidents of the Latin American LWF member churches further decided to draw up a position paper with respect to the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation on 31 October 2017. It will include proposals on how to celebrate the anniversary at regional level, and would be presented to the COL in 2008.

"The Reformation does not belong to us alone. It connects us with other Protestant Christians, indeed, with many Pentecostal churches in the region, who consider the Lutheran Reformation as part of their tradition," stated the COL vice-moderator, Rev. Melvin Jiménez, also president of the Lutheran Costa Rican Church (ILCO). The ILCO leader hopes that it will be possible "to move toward this anniversary with the Roman Catholic Church too, and highlight its importance for Latin America."

The LWF Latin America and the Caribbean region extends from Mexico in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. It encompasses 16 member churches – including 14 in Latin America and two in the Caribbean – as well as nine recognized congregations, with a total membership of some 842,000 Lutherans. These churches have very different backgrounds, with some founded in the 18th century by immigrants particularly from Europe, others by missionaries from the United States and Europe, while others have local roots.

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