There are more than 77,000 baptized members in worldwide mission fields. Another 15,000 people are being reached with the gospel through alternate strategies.   These Christians are served by 50 missionaries plus several lay missionaries and layworkers who are part of the Christian Volunteer Corps of WELS Kingdom Workers. 

Since 2003 the membership of CELM has grown from 3,677 to 7,457 souls.  National pastors, now numbering 14, are taking an increasing role in supervising congregations, spearheading evangelism and stewardship efforts and preparing men for ministry. In addition, the spiritual and physical needs of three hundred children are more than amply met through the orphanages that WELS has established in cooperation with the national church. We thank and praise the Lord for his manifold blessings!

 Visit the mission site.

Today, 12 WELS missionaries serve Latin America. In addition to Puerto Rico, they reside in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. They also travel to Colombia, Bolivia, and other places.

Missionaries learn the languages of the countries they serve, which include Spanish, Portuguese, French and Creole. This helps them share the Gospel with others, train men to be pastors, and work with these pastors to develop self-supporting congregations and church bodies.

Approximately 550 million people live in Latin America. To reach them all with the good news of salvation is a steep task. Yet we give thanks to God for providing opportunities to do so. While cultures, people, and languages vary, the goal is one: to bring more sheep into Christ’s resurrected arms

With the fall of the iron curtain in 1989, WELS entered three countries of the former Soviet bloc, Russia, Bulgaria, and Albania. To do mission work in these lands, WELS missionaries use the Slavic languages of Russia and Bulgaria with its Cyrillic alphabet, and the Shqip language of Albania, an old form of Indo-European which predates even Greek and Latin.

The geographic spread of these fields is daunting. Russia covers the largest land mass in the world, stretching across 11 time zones. WELS mission work in Russia is carried on mainly in Siberia which is part of the Asian Continent, but includes also remote outposts in European Russia that require our missionaries over a day’s travel to reach. Bulgaria, on the western shore of the Black Sea, is the ancient Thrace. Albania, on the Adriatic Sea across from Italy, is the biblical Illyricum, also called Dalmatia, to which the Apostle Paul sent Titus to preach.

We are privileged in WELS today to be winning souls for Christ and salvation in lands that for over two generations were closed to the gospel by godless, communist regimes.

The Medical Mission is a program in which WELS or ELS  health care professionals can use their God-given abilities to spread His love in a different area of the world. This ministry of love is a tremendous benefit to the Lutheran Church of Central Africa and our fellow sisters and brothers in Jesus.

The men who desire to be pastors are very active members of their congregations. It would be a major challenge for their respective congregations, most of which are still quite small, to pull them out to a “central seminary” for three years in order to complete their seminary training. So instead, we travel to them. This allows them to keep their secular jobs to provide for their families; it allows them to continue to serve their local congregation, gaining valuable experience and already serving their brothers and sisters; and it allows them to receive seminary training—all at the same time.
By forming this LATTE team of six missionary professors, each member of the team is able to specialize in certain parts of the curriculum and, therefore, better serve the students and national churches. It is a large task. We are involved in training almost 40 men—some full-time, some part-time—in seven different countries. Because it is by God’s grace and help alone that any of us can serve him, please join us in praying for His blessing on our efforts.

Read more at the LATTE blog.

WELS began mission work in Puerto Rico in 1964. Today one WELS missionary resides on the island, and helps the Puerto Rican church train future pastors. Three Puerto Rican pastors shepherd the four congregations there. The Lutheran church there is taking steps to become a self-supporting synod.

Go to the Puerto Rico mission site…