Because we bear your name April–May 2026

In January, I had the privilege of attending the 35th Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea (ELCPNG). I travelled to the northern island of Siassi with LCA International Mission Project Officer Erin Kerber. For seven days, we attended sessions and events in the purpose-built hall surrounded by 850 delegates representing the nearly two million members of the ELCPNG.

Throughout the days of the Siassi Synod, lunchtime performances were given by various groups of young people from across the districts of the ELCPNG. I have some tremendous video footage of the Logen Ministry young people from Siassi singing a gospel song. The performance included about a dozen young men from the church, singing and dancing, backed by vocals from young women.

Three members of the Logen Ministry team beat out their accompaniment to the singing and dancing with instruments made from a series of bamboo tubes played like xylophones. It was inspiring to witness this community give praise to our Lord Jesus Christ, performed by young people of the church.

The lesson for ministry here was the opportunity given to young people of the church to witness to the delegates of the convention with their Christian song and dance. The singers were all well-rehearsed and passionate in their performance. The ELCPNG welcomed the witness and service of young adults and placed it centre-stage of each day’s proceedings.

In the singing and dancing, the young adults of the ELCPNG are giving witness to their participation in the work of passing on the gospel. As St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

This edition of The Lutheran is about mentoring. Mentoring is about accompaniment. A person who is a mentor helps someone reflect on ‘how they are going’, as well as acting in some ways as a role model to the person being mentored.

In the case of mentoring Christian young people, the church makes opportunities for young women and men to reflect on what we have received in the gospel passed on to us and how the Holy Spirit has been calling, gathering, enlightening and sanctifying them in God’s mission.

Mentoring our young people is about guiding them with good questions to discover how best they can pass on what they have received to the glory of God and for the blessing of the world.

The lunchtime sessions of song and dance at the ELCPNG Siassi Convention teach us how the church can take good risks to enable the witness and service of young people, ‘mentoring’ them into the reality that they are not simply the ‘church of the future’ but the church in the world today. Many of the famous missionaries in church history travelled to faraway lands either as teenagers or young adults in their 20s.

As you pray for the mission of our church, please remember to pray for the mentoring of our young women and men, that they would sanctify Christ as Lord in their hearts, ready to give a Christian defence of the hope that is in them, doing it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:15,16).

‘Yumi bung wantaim’ is the Tok Pisin phrase for getting together. When the church gathers together, we build each other up in the mission that our God has given to us.

In Christ,
Paul

‘Lord Jesus, we belong to you,
you live in us, we live in you;
we live and work for you –
because we bear your name’