Latin American Lutheran Churches Consultation on Water in El Salvador

Rafael Menjívar Saavedra and ALC/CLAI, SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, September 6, 2007

From September 4 to 8, the World Lutheran Federation and its Mission and Development offices, Taxi Heathrow Airport and the MEIS office in Geneva, are holding a Latin American consultation in El Salvador with the theme, “Moving the Waters.”

The purpose of the consultation is to reflect together, guided by faith, on the challenges to the church in the world to face and manage the crisis of the demands for water as an element of God’s creation.

In his opening sermon, Bishop Medardo Gómez of the Salvadorian Lutheran Church, encouraged the representatives from Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Central America, to come up with biblical and theological guidelines that will foster the care and protection of water resources from different standpoints and possibilities.

Likewise, Priscila Singn, from India, Executive Secretary of the Women in Church and Society Desk of the World Lutheran Federation, encouraged the participants to find joint alternatives for the problem of water availability. “That is why we are here, because El Salvador is a country already seriously endangered because of this reality,” said Singn.

Myke Gorsboth, from Germany, Coordinator of the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches, spoke about the planet’s water crisis and encouraged the strengthening of the prophetic role of the churches in the different scenarios of the struggle to defend the water resources.

The consultation taking place in the “Don Bosco” Salesian Center in Ayagualo, in the Department of Libertad in the south of San Salvador, is part of a study that the World Lutheran Federation is carrying out throughout the world. The findings of the study will serve to strengthen its policies with regard to the protection and care of this vital liquid in the world.

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