Church Growth in Africa Contributes Most to Lutheran Membership Rise in 2004

The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) worldwide released the latest membership statistic of 2004 on Monday. The total LWF membership is now close to 66 million with an overall increase of 3.63 million Christians among all the member churches of LWF worldwide in 2004.

Looking across the whole world, the growth of Africa has become the highlight and a most encouraging sign. Lutheran churches in Africa recorded a membership increase of almost 1.1 million which accounts for a rise of 8.2 percent, pushing the total in that continent to 14,133,572 members.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mozambique registered the largest increase, with an almost fivefold rise in membership from 1,250 to 5,987. The Malagasy Lutheran Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania have a 20 percent increase in membership; now each church has 3 million members.

While Rwanda is in the process of recovery from the 1994 genocide, the Lutheran Church even obtained an 18 percent increase. In predominantly Muslim Senegal, membership in the Lutheran Church of Senegal rose by four percent to reach 3,620 members. All these have clearly showed that the spread of the Gospel can never be completely hindered by the external environment.

In contrast, in the more well-off South Africa, churches recorded a decreasing membership. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa lost almost 180,000 members, which represents a 23.4 percent decline.

Overall however, the growth of African Lutheran Churches has contributed the most in the total membership of LWF worldwide. It has matched the observation of many evangelicals who see the revival of the Gospel as moving down from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern counterparts.

In the North, most of the countries in Europe, where Lutheran Churches were first established, have reported a membership decline. The Church of Sweden, the largest Lutheran church worldwide, recorded a one percent increase over the one-year period putting the total membership at 7,220,694.

Membership in the third largest LWF member church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, fell by 0.3 percent. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark, the fourth largest LWF member church, recorded 4,499,501 members, which corresponds to a 0.6 percent decline.

The Lutheran Church in Great Britain had 13.5 percent fewer members. However, the Lutheran Council of Great Britain, representing the common work of eleven different Lutheran churches with congregations or chaplaincies there, recorded a nine percent increase in membership.

Germany, home to Lutheran’s Reformation, is still the country with the highest number of Lutheran Christians. However, there is a 1.2 percent drop in membership, representing a loss of 159,923 members and now total number of members stands at 13,103,946.

Despite the decline in most of the European countries, the overall membership in Lutheran churches in Europe increased by 7.3 percent, which is largely due to the admission of the recently established Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN) in 2004. The 2.53-million member PCN is a result of a merger of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (ELCNL), the Netherlands Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. PCN is a member of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

In Asia, a number of countries recorded a very high increase in membership. The West Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church, a non-LWF member church, doubled its membership to 3,700. Membership in the Lutheran Church in Korea rose by 82 percent. A 50 percent increase in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thailand has resulted in a new figure of 2,584 members. Also, in India, Malaysia and Myanmar, where non-Christian faiths are very prevalent, the Lutheran Church obtained over 10 percent increase in membership.