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Study guide


hanks to Lutherans across North America, the ELCA is on target to reach its Malaria Campaign goal of $15 million. But it means much more than just a


benchmark fulfilled. It means lives saved and communities preserved; global partnerships strengthened; and brothers and sisters across the globe working together for the sake of our neighbors.


Exercise 1: Neighbors To help us better understand the command to love our


neighbor as ourselves, Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan. Read Luke 10:25-37 and discuss: • Is a neighbor only someone we know as a friend? Is it only someone who shares our race, religion or social status? Someone we have to meet personally?


• What made the Samaritan a neighbor? • What does it mean to show mercy? • What do Jesus’ last words in verse 37 mean?


• How does the Malaria Campaign help us to be good neighbors?


Exercise 2: Local efforts What has your congregation done to raise money for


the ELCA Malaria Campaign? Can it do another (or a first) project? As a study group, research options for a response on the ELCA website (www.elca.org/malaria) and draft an action plan for presentation to your congregational leaders. Now do the same thing for your synod.


Exercise 3: Malaria minded Test your knowledge of malaria. The study group leader


prepares by researching basic facts on malaria and the ELCA campaign. Meeting together, the leader first explores members’ knowledge: • What is malaria and its symptoms?


• How is it spread? • Where is it most common? • Why is it so harmful? • How many people die from it each year? • How is it prevented? • What else do you know about malaria?


This study guide excerpt is offered as one example of the more than 400 that are currently available on The Lutheran’s website. Download guides (including a longer version of this one)—free to print and Web subscribers —at www.thelutheran.org (click “study guides”).


By Robert C. Blezard


Malaria: Fight gains momentum T


Now the leader shares the facts and discusses how the ELCA campaign is helping.


Exercise 4: Stunning toll In 2013 there were 584,000 deaths from malaria, which


roughly compares to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates for Las Vegas (603,488), Milwaukee (599,164) and Albuquerque, N.M. (556,495). Imagine that all the residents of your city or county were lost to malaria in a year. Discuss: • What would the response be from our people, government, social service agencies and churches?


• How much money, time and effort would be commit- ted to combating malaria?


• Is the world response to malaria sufficient? Is your congregation’s?


Exercise 5: Children’s toll Of the 584,000 deaths from malaria in 2013, children


accounted for 453,000, which is approximately the esti- mated population of Atlanta (447,841). Imagine a city of children the size of Atlanta being lost to malaria in a year, and that your children, grandchildren, and all their friends and schoolmates were among those dead. Discuss: • What would you commit to helping?


• What response would you organize at your congregation?


• What response would you want the world to make?


Exercise 6: Wiped out where? A widespread disease with a centuries-long history


of causing people to suffer, malaria was eradicated from Europe in the 1930s and from the U.S. in 1951. • If the methods for eradicating malaria are known, what factors have kept it from being wiped out of Africa and Asia?


• With enough resources and persistence brought to bear in the Global Malaria Action Plan, can malaria realisti- cally be wiped out globally? 


Author bio: Blezard is an assistant to the bishop of the Lower Susquehanna Synod. He has a master of divinity degree from Boston University and did subsequent study at the


Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.) and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.


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