Exchange with the partnership groups of the Moretele and Odi church districts of the Sprengel West / Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
Exchange with Superintendent Njabulo Sithole, the chairman of the partnership work Sipho Chonco in the Durban church district and Pastor Ntuthuko Nkosi (South East District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa).
Exchange with the partnership group of the Western Church District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (Central District).
Regional Bishop Seane (Central District of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa) presents the "Diakonia AIDS Ministry" project.
Young adult meeting in the community of Hayfields, Pietermaritzburg (NELCSA).
Speaker Marlene Altebockwinkel speaks at a service organised by the prayer women of the Durban South parish association.
Meeting with partnership groups from Pietermaritzburg of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
Getting to know each other and listening: Partnership work in South Africa
ELM officers gained first-hand experience by visiting South African partnership groups.
"We are trying to approach the concept of 'international church partnership' from a South African perspective. We ask what partnership means for the people we meet, how partnership work is structurally integrated locally and what challenges and visions for the future there are," explains Marlene Altebockwinkel. The consultant for partnerships and exchange programmes at the Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM) travelled to South Africa in October 2025 together with Anne Matthys, ecumenical employee of the ELM and pastor in the Hildesheim-Sarstedt church district.
It was Marlene Altebockwinkel's first trip to South Africa in her role as partnership officer at the ELM. She had previously been familiar with partnership work primarily from a German perspective, although she had also got to know the South African partners in joint workshops. "It was now time to travel to South Africa myself and experience everything first-hand," she emphasises.
Anne Matthys comes from Botswana and has worked in various dioceses in South Africa since her ordination as a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) in 2016. She has been living and working in Germany for two years. For her, the trip was a reunion with former colleagues. However, she now also saw "her" church from a different perspective, the "German-Hanoverian" one.
On their two-week business trip, the two ELM employees visited people involved in partnerships from various church districts in three dioceses, met superintendents, regional bishops, pastors, NELCSA and ELCSA volunteers and their bishops. They had conversations, were taken into people's everyday lives, took part in church services, youth meetings and school events. "Our perspectives on what we have experienced complement and enrich each other greatly," they both agree.
"What we hear and take away is as varied and diverse as the partnerships themselves," says Anne Matthys. The challenges are different in every church district, in every diocese, and the partnerships are in different situations. Some are still finding their feet after the change at management level, others are very active and balanced. Those responsible addressed issues such as the integration of partnership work in the local parishes, its anchoring in the diocese and the role of money in partnership work.
There are voices from young people involved in partnership work in South Africa who say: "We now want to learn more from each other. If money is collected for us in Germany, then we can do the same!" They also believe that the meaning and purpose of partnership trips could be redefined.
Anne Matthys and Marlene Altebockwinkel take away: Partnership work has a lot of potential, but we need to take a close look at how it is implemented so that everyone is happy in the end. There is a need to discuss how this can be achieved.
