Global mission

Christianity is a universal religion.  The Lutheran congregations in Vantaa have many contacts abroad and are involved in the global mission of the church.  We interact with friends in many countries, and we also send and support people who spread the good news of salvation around the world and serve people who need many kinds of help.

Every Christian can take part in fulfilling the mission of the church by praying, donating money and doing volunteer work.  Congregations allocate money for global mission in their budgets and pray for missionaries and churches in other parts of the world.

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland congregations do not actually employ missionaries who go to other countries, and there is no department in the central administration of the church to supervise global mission.  Instead, mission work abroad has been organized so that private organizations (missionary societies, mission agencies) recruit and send members of the Lutheran church to be missionaries and direct the work.  Congregations and individual Christians support the work of these organizations with money and prayer.

Our congregations in Vantaa, then, are not employers for missionaries, but we are committed to support specific persons who are employed by organizations that have been recognized by our church for global mission.  (Such a person is called nimikkolähetti in Finnish.)  Lutherans in Vantaa support a total of about forty missionaries working in more than fifteen countries – but we are not the only ones who support them; they also receive support from some other congregations in Finland.  About half of the missionaries we support work in Africa (with the greatest numbers in Ethiopia and Angola), and the other half is on other continents.  Some of the missionaries are as close as St. Petersburg or Germany, others as far as Japan, Botswana or Venezuela.

Besides supporting missionaries who have left Finland to serve abroad, we also support global mission in places and projects where there are perhaps none of our own missionaries.  Lutherans in Vantaa support the work of Bible societies, a drug rehabilitation center in Hong Kong, the Finnish Seamen's Mission, the production and broadcasting of Christian radio programs, the educating of AIDS orphans in Kenya, literacy classes in Senegal, a pastor in northwestern Namibia and many other ministries.

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland there is a foundation called FinnChurchAid (Kirkon ulkomaanapu in Finnish, Kyrkans Utlandshjälp in Swedish) that operates as a part of an international aid network of churches in development projects and disaster relief.  Lutherans in Vantaa also support FinnChurchAid.

Every year (mostly in February and March) Lutheran congregations in Finland arrange the Joint Responsibility Fundraising Campaign (Yhteisvastuukeräys in Finnish).  This has been done since 1950.  The campaign is ceremonially opened by the President of the Republic in a televised broadcast on the first Sunday in February, so it is well known in our country.  Originally this campaign was to help Finns who lived in poverty, and every year a part of the collected money is still used for domestic projects, but for a long time most of the income has been used in projects in developing countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America.  This campaign, then, has also become a part of our global mission as a form of international diaconal activity.

The Lutheran congregations and parish union in Vantaa have a total of ten official partner congregations (“friendship congregations,” ystävyysseurakunta in Finnish) in Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Hungary and Namibia.  We visit each other and pray for each other.  In addition, there are many informal contacts to Christians in various parts of the world.

More information on our missionaries and friends around the world can be found on the page of each congregation on our Finnish-language website.  Some of the Finnish organizations involved in the global mission of the church also have English web pages of their own, with links given below:

Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (FELM)

Lutheran Evangelical Association in Finland (LEAF)

Finnish Lutheran Overseas Mission (FLOM)

FinnChurchAid (FCA)