An Interview with Pastor John Fehrmann, Director of Mission Advancement,

Lutheran Heritage Foundation

In early September 2002, Pastor John Fehrmann spent five days in Adelaide while on his way from Sri Lanka to Papua New Guinea. The following is taken from an interview conducted by Pastor David Buck at Luther Seminary on 11 September.

John, what are the origins and objects of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation (LHF)?

LHF began in 1992. The Soviet Union had just fallen apart. Everyone was going to Russia. Russia was like a vacuum that was sucking in everybody from around the world that claimed to be Christian. Rev Bob Rahn also went there to see what might be done. When he arrived he discovered that Christians were without any resources.

The first thing that we did was print a Bible. We printed a Russian translation that had already been done, side-by-side with the text of God’s Word to the Nations, for free distribution. What we discovered was that not only was there a lack of Scriptures, but that no one knew what to do with them once they had them. That’s basically because the materials that have been passed down to us—our Lutheran heritage—were missing. Catechisms, the Book of Concord, doctrinal textbooks, Luther’s writings and all the early fathers were missing. There was nothing Lutheran to answer the hermeneutical question, ‘What does this mean?’ LHF began to focus its attention on translating works from German and English into Russian. As far as we know, never in the history of Lutheranism has an organisation existed whose sole purpose is to translate confessional Lutheran materials into other languages.

Weren’t Russian Lutherans organised enough to do this work themselves?

Not just Russian Lutherans. Germans had been in Tanzania as long as they had been in the United States and in Australia. The LHF provided Tanzanian Lutherans with the first translation into Swahili of Luther’s Small Catechism. We are now completing the entire Book of Concord in Swahili. Swahili was brought about by Islamic slave traders on the East coast. It’s a mixture of several languages. According to some demographers, there are more people today who speak Swahili—over 100m—than German. At one of the conferences where we were introducing and teaching the materials we had translated, a Tanzanian pastor stood up and asked with tears in his eyes, “Why is it that when the Germans left home, they left their books at home? And how is it that when they left here they didn’t leave us with any books either?

They didn’t use the Catechism?

All over the world, missionaries have tried desperately to provide for themselves materials that they need. And so over the years some texts have been translated. But the world is relatively empty.

There are hundreds of projects that we have completed or are in the process of working on, or are committed to. We’re not reprinting old materials. We’re translating materials that people don’t have. The Churches are begging for them.

Is your work being received eagerly everywhere?

There’s not a place in the world where those who see our materials have not eagerly welcomed us. Certainly there are some Church bodies and some governments that are not happy at all with what we do, because we’re Lutheran. We understand that the gospel changes the way people live. It also undermines a lot of very happy, satisfied and contented Churches. The Gospel is a two-edged sword. It divides those who confuse the forgiveness of sins with works-righteousness. So we do meet with resistance and some of our people have been killed. Last year, nineteen times, I was either arrested, held hostage, put in detention, held by military police, or was refused permission to leave a country, for all kinds of reasons. But generally the materials we produce are received with open arms. People are dying and they want them.

We work in southern Asia, in Africa, in the Caribbean, and some other places that are hostile to Christians. In particular they seem to be increasingly hostile towards confessional Lutherans.

How do you get started in a place?

When we go to a new country, if there’s somebody there that we can work with, we do so. If we don’t find anybody, we just begin the translation effort ourselves. Usually what happens in the process is that people begin to discover a Lutheranism that is academic, thoughtful and not emotive. It’s right. The Spirit works through these texts because they are the word of God. Churches start. Men want to be pastors. Great things happen.

One of our operating principles is that we translate, publish, distribute and introduce our books without charging a penny. We do it all for nothing. That’s why we like to own the copyright, so that nobody takes what we’ve done and tries to make money on it. If we were to pay for the publication of the Catechism in an Aboriginal language, we would insist that whatever we publish would not be sold. We would insist that it be given away.

We hear it said everywhere, “In our culture, things have more value if you pay for them than if you get them free.” If that’s a truism in every culture, then it’s not a cultural thing. The problem is that when these books are given away free and their gospel-content is taught, there aren’t enough pastors, church building s and chairs for the people who are interested. All over the world—though not in Australia—where people have been deprived of sound material, there isn’t enough room for the people who are interested.

You mentioned before a pastor in Tanzania who became quite emotional about your work there. Aren’t you also active in Kenya? How has your work been received there?

We have an office outside Nairobi. The Kenyan equivalent of the FBI watched the LHF operate in Nairobi for five years. At the end of the five years we asked for a licence to be certified as a non-profit organisation. They not only said, “Yes, you’re so clean.” They also gave us an amazing gift. We were given the right to buy and sell property. So we actually own a piece of property in Kenya. With Kenya so careful these days, it’s amazing.

Basically all of our work for East Africa is done out of our office in Nairobi, where Dr Anssi Simojoki is the coordinator/manager. From Nairobi we cover Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi. We’ll probably do Madagascar and Tanzania from there as well. We send our translators to Nairobi to teach them some Biblical languages. We also teach them some confessional theology and translation skills, to take back home wherever they’re working. (Most of them are pastors.) But we don’t want to be accused of being involved in theological education. We just train our translators to be better theologians so that they’re better translators. The Church benefits as well, because the pastors become better at what they do. We also send people from Benin and other places in West Africa to East Africa to acquire better skills.

I also have a question about Sudan where LHF has been heavily supporting Pastor Andrew Elisa. With the civil war in progress, how is it that Lutheran mission work is allowed to continue, especially in Khartoum? You’ve translated the Catechism into Arabic, for example. Doesn’t the Islamic government oppose that?

I’ve asked myself that question a lot. I asked it of Dr Anssi Simojoki about seven months ago. There are now about 35 congregations in Sudan, with more than one in Khartoum. How is it that Washington DC gives us an exemption to work there? How is it that the Khartoum government lets us do this? There’s a medical clinic and a seminary—the Concordia Institute for the Office of the Holy Ministry—with about 20 pastoral students. Right now a pastor from Finland by the name of Dr Reija Arkkila is teaching at the seminary in Khartoum. A Finnish mission society called Luther Foundation Finland sent their first overseas worker there this year, a young lady with a graduate degree in Hebrew. She’s teaching Biblical languages at the Institute in Khartoum. How do we get away with this? Anssi looked at me and he said, “You don’t need to know the answer to that question”. This is basically his African way of saying, “It is sufficient for God to know why He is allowing this to take place”. I don’t know why. I don’t know why we’re allowed to do what we do in Rwanda, another war zone, in Burundi, another war zone, or in Tanzania. We work in Zanzibar, a Muslim island where the slave trade started. We do so on behalf of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. It’s their mission focus that we are supporting.

Is there anything you’d like to say in conclusion?

LHF is a parachurch organisation, not a Church. We’re owned and controlled by a board of directors. We’re working in over 80 different languages in more than 80 countries. We work with probably 150+ different Lutheran church bodies. But even though we work with many liberal church bodies, we do not compromise at all on our confessional standards.

For more information on LHF, see its website: www.lhfmissions.org