Learn more about the Ethiopian Partnership

The Great Lakes and Heartland Annual Conferences have been invited to a partnership with our sisters and brothers in Ethiopia. A part of this invitation for the Great Lakes is to support pastoral families in Ethiopia for education. There is no salary subsidy, conference health insurance, or retirement program for our Ethiopian pastors.

The GLAC Leadership Council has chosen to invite the grassroots connection of local churches to consider a $25 a month or $300 annual partnership per pastor family. There are 168 sponsorships for 2025, or a total financial need of $50,400. Each sponsorship supports up to two children from each pastoral in Ethiopia.  

Once the funds are received, we trust the pastors to use the money for their children in the following ways:

• to pay school fees
• to buy school books
• to clothe their children in school
• to feed those children

The $25 a month helps to ensure that urban bi-vocational Methodist pastors can have enough grain each day so that their wives can make bread and their children have a reasonable chance to grow to adulthood.  For a rural bi-vocational pastor farmer who may have sacrificed 10% of his farmland so that his people can build a mud-walled church, the $25 provides cash income so that his children can buy used clothes as well as paper and pencils to go to school.

We know many are having conversations with church leadership, Sunday School classes, small groups, and families. If this is something you are being stirred to respond to, we want to ensure you can respond as you feel led.

Ways to partner…

- Local churches as a whole

- Sunday school classes or small groups

- Individuals or families

Can a church have more than one sponsorship? Absolutely!

We are finding that individuals desire to have a sponsorship in their own conviction. We are also seeing small groups and Sunday school classes stirred to sponsor a pastoral family. We are also seeing existing and emerging churches want to partner with people beyond themselves.