Sustainable Development
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Within the context of its project work DMD organizes and supports workshops and seminars at regular intervals to strengthen the competence of the LWF member churches for sustainable development initiatives. Guiding principles for sustainable development have been developed by the LWF.
Concern for sustainability reaches beyond particular projects or programs and points to the need for the whole communion to work together, interdependently, so that the ministry of word and sacrament is sustainable throughout the world. It also calls for responsible stewardship among churches so as to create and develop sustainable structures that do not make church ministries vulnerable to financial crisis.
In many places church-sponsored development strategies go against the dominant market-oriented development plans and activities of governments and global economic forces. Churches are working with poor villages and marginalized communities to empower them to help themselves, to control the use of their own natural resources (land, forests, water) and thus their own sustainable development.
Individual Lutheran communities do not have the political clout to influence their governments or to prevent the impact of globalization. But the Lutheran communion through joint advocacy with the ecumenical network can stand together for the liberation of the poor.
