Before 1894 the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s mission endeavors focused on home missions (missions within the United States). In 1894 the first Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod missionary to India was commissioned and in 1895 he started his work. This was the first foreign mission field for the LCMS, but it built on the work already started by the Leipzig Mission Society.
The following biographies are some of the “Faces of Lutheran Missions in India” and are made freely available for congregational use and study. As an added bonus they are also being made available in Malayalam and Tamil, both native languages of India. The Malayalam handouts are translated by the Rev. Dr. Christu Das, principal of Concordia Theological Seminary Nagercoil and courtesy of the India Evangelical Lutheran Church (IELC). The Tamil handouts are translated by Mr. Jayabalan Murthy, who
completed his M.A. in Intercultural Theology in 2015. His Master thesis published in 2017 is titled, “Leipzig Mission and Dalit Christians in Pandur, Tamil Nadu, India.” He is currently working on his Ph.D. degree at the Georg-August University of Göttingen , Germany, and is a Reverend candidate in Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church, India.
These handouts will also be available at the CHI Exhibit, “The Mercy of Christ Freely Given: The First Twenty-Seven Years of Missouri Synod Work in South India”, which will run from August 2019 to February 2021. This exhibit will be in the museum at the
CHI building.
