Togo Lutheran Center for Theological Studies

From the LCMS web site:

The Lutheran Churches in Africa are in desperate need of well-trained church leaders and pastors. The Church in Africa is growing very rapidly by God’s grace. However, this rapid growth has also spread church leadership extremely thin. In some places, families wait for months for a pastor to be available to baptize or confirm their children. In others, pastors travel long distances and lead five or six churches.

The Lutheran Center for Theological Studies (CLET) strives to meet this need by training more pastors for the African Lutheran Church. CLET is located in Dapaong, Togo and serves the French-speaking West African Lutheran church bodies of seven countries: Togo, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2001, the church bodies established an international board to ensure that African leadership will promote and govern the center. "This marks the beginning of forming an 'African' seminary for an 'African' church," said LCMS World Mission missionary Glenn Fluegge who gives leadership to the seminary program developement.

The CLET program also has grown to include two tracks—a novice (pre-seminary) track tailored for leaders who have little formal education, and a track leading to ordination.

The LCMS missionary team in Togo developed this approach based on the realities of the fields—where the people are and what they need—rather than trying to take a syllabus from the United States and transfer it to Africa. Many church leaders have had only five years of formal education, and read and write at a low level. Courses are all contextualized; they speak to West African issues.

Your prayerful and financial partnership in preparing French-speaking African Christians for service in the church will be multiplied greatly as trained leaders return to their homelands in seven countries to serve the Lord with gladness.