http://www.grandforksherald.

com/event/article/id/151034/ (2/14/10)
Published February 12 2010, Grand Forks Herald

Lutheran church leader visits GF from

Central African Republic
On his first visit to America, the Rev. Andre Golike, head of the Lutheran church in the Central
African Republic, was able to practice the seminal Christian tradition of fishing, albeit through
the ice on Devils Lake.

By: Stephen J. Lee, Grand Forks Herald

• President Andre Golike

The Rev. Andre Golike (center), president of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the
Central African Republic, visits with UND student Michael Camerlingo (left) and Noel
Tade on Friday at UND’s Christus Rex Lutheran Center. Herald photo by Eric Hylden.

On his first visit to America, the Rev. Andre Golike was able to practice the seminal Christian
tradition of fishing, albeit through the ice on Devils Lake, this week.

During lunch Friday with UND students, the memory of it made him laugh, despite not catching
anything.

He’s hoping for more success in netting new friends and ties to Lutherans here to help his
parishioners back home.

Golike is president, or bishop, of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Central African
Republic, a poverty-stricken, landlocked nation where civil unrest is common and Lutherans are
not.

Only about 70,000 of the CAR’s 4.4 million people are Lutherans, about 1.5 percent. In the Red
River Valley, more than a third of the population is Lutheran.

But his church is growing, Golike said, doubling in membership in the past 20 years or so.
About 25 percent of the population of the CAR is Protestant, including Lutheran; 25 percent is
Catholic, about 35 percent practice animism and 15 percent are Muslim, according to online
sources.

This week, Golike crossed North Dakota, seeing much of a winter-locked land like he’s never
visited before.

Experiencing snow was new.

“I have watched the weather on TV,” he said. “I saw it on Kilimanjaro when I was growing up
but we never went up there.”

Still, he was a little shocked, he said, posing in a shiver, at how cold it can feel here.

“But it was amazing and so good how people were so warm to me here,” he said. “Anywhere I
go here, I feel at home. People are so friendly, so that we really feel we are one in Christ.”

That’s the whole point, said Pastor Kathy Fick, during Golike’s visit to Christus Rex Lutheran
Campus Center at UND.

The Eastern North Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has long had a
“companion” relationship with Golike’s church in Africa, sending short-term mission teams and
special gifts there.

Golike also happens to have an old friend who illustrates the long-held church ties of Lutherans
here to Lutherans there.

Noel Tade grew up in the same village as Golike, and some years ago met a young ELCA
missionary who grew up in Beach, N.D.: Sarah Larson. They married, and six years ago, they
moved to North Dakota, where she is the pastor of four congregations in and around Walcott,
N.D., south of Fargo.

Noel Tade is serving as a bit of an interpreter for Golike on this week’s visit.

They both speak the three languages common in the CAR: French, Sangho and Baya; as well as
English, and they often use all four in the same conversation, they say while laughing.

Golike said he usually preaches in Sangho because that’s the trade language spoken by all the
ethnic groups in the CAR; French is spoken only by those with educations, and Baya is one of
the ethnic groups in the country.

Golike has about 67 pastors for his 70,000 church members, and many of the pastors serve 10 to
15 congregations. “They walk,” he said of how his pastors make the circuit.

So, he hopes to make friends here to encourage North Dakota Lutherans to donate toward
providing motorcycles for his pastors.
He’s also interested in recruiting people to come to the CAR to minister.

“Are any of you thinking about becoming pastors or missionaries?” he asked a round table of
UND students in Christus Rex Lutheran Center on Friday.

Ericka Erickson, a senior in music, told Golike, “I’m thinking about going to seminary or into
the Peace Corps.”

American Lutheran missionaries have sort of abandoned his country in recent years, largely
because of civil unrest that made living there dangerous, Golike said. So, he has houses and
buildings standing empty, waiting for missionaries, he said. Only one Lutheran American
missionary couple remains, Joe and Deborah Troester, Golike said.

Having Golike visit on Friday was a high spot for his student congregation, said the Rev. Chad
Brucklacher, pastor of Christus Rex.

“The greatest value is when we can walk in accompaniment with another Christian church that is
in a different culture,” he said. “It allows us to know what the gospel of Christ looks like in all its
different shapes and sizes. The hope is that students experience a more diverse way of being
Christians together.”

Golike will have lunch at noon Saturday with people in Highland Lutheran Church, east of
Cummings, N.D., near the Red River in Trail County.

At 5 p.m. Saturday, he will preach at a multicultural worship service in Faith Lutheran in West
Fargo.

On Sunday morning, he will preach in two large Fargo churches, Messiah Lutheran at 9 a.m., the
service that is televised across the region at 11 a.m. on WDAY and WDAZ TV, Channels 6 and
8; and he will preach at 11 a.m. in Hope Lutheran’s north campus on Broadway.