Are you a pastor who’s up for the adventure of a lifetime?
LHF is searching for volunteer instructors at the Concordia Lutheran Institute for the Holy Ministry (CLIHM) in South Sudan. Each teaching session is a 2-week intensive, with dates available from the end of August through early December 2025.
Instructors will teach a dozen 4th year seminary students who have recently returned from vicarage. Topics still needing to be covered are listed on the LHF website (see link below) and include subjects such as homiletics, theology of mission, pastoral counseling, Genesis and Romans.
Rev. Dr. Dinku Bato recently returned from teaching a course on church administration and organization.
“The country of South Sudan is often in upheaval because of tribal conflict that’s going on,” Rev. Bato said. “Because of that, people don’t have experience running an organization like a church in an orderly way. So to prepare them, we practiced things like asking them to lead an elders’ meeting, with minutes, where they presented a topic for discussion. We also assigned group work where they learned to collaborate. In all these projects, the men were very eager to learn more. Heretofore, it seems to have been a kind of deficit in their culture.”
Concerns about travel to South Sudan?
Though Americans are frequently advised against travel to South Sudan, LHF regularly sends instructors in and out of the country every two weeks without incident. The travel plans are well laid out and exercised.
As South Sudan is a very impoverished country, the lodgings in Yambio are much more basic than Americans are accustomed to. “But if you can embrace a couple of weeks camping, you’re prepared for South Sudan,” said Rev. Robert Rahn, LHF founder who at age 89, recently returned from the seminary.“Be prepared fo
r very hot and humid weather; this is a tropical region,” advised Rev. Bato. “There is fresh water for bathing and plenty of bottled water for drinking, but seminary instructors may want to bring along snacks like beef jerky or peanut butter to compliment the abundance of mangos, bananas and so on. The residents try their level best to accommodate visiting professors.”
A doctorate degree is not required for being a volunteer CLIHM instructor. “The courses are not at the level of our LCMS seminaries, but are instead more along the lines of an undergraduate Bible school,” explained Rev. Bato. “What IS necessary is someone who is gifted in teaching, who has a passion for helping form new pastors in a mission field where they are in desperate need for more pastors to serve their ever-expanding church body.”
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