📍 St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Ampo | 6 July 2025
Message by Rev. Hans Giegere, ELCPNG National Evangelism Secretary
Today is ELCPNG Sunday. Across the country, Lutheran congregations gathered in worship services filled with Scripture, prayer, and special reflections on the faithful servants who carried the Gospel to our shores. This year’s theme draws from the Gospel reading of Luke 10:1–11, 16–20, where Jesus sends out the seventy-two, reminding us of the urgency, courage, and commitment required in mission.
At St. Andrew’s in Ampo, Rev. Hans Giegere delivered a powerful message, centered on the life and witness of Rev. Johannes Flierl, the pioneer missionary who arrived on PNG soil in 1886 and gave 44 years of unwavering service to God’s mission.
Rev. Giegere reminded the congregation that Flierl’s mission was not a comfortable journey. It was filled with hardship, isolation, sickness, and loss. Yet he responded wholeheartedly to God’s call—leaving behind the comforts of Adelaide, South Australia, to serve among people he had not yet met, in a land where he would eventually give his life’s best years.
Quoting Flierl from his own writings, Rev. Giegere read:
“As for myself, I am ready to move on to an outcast outpost. I am prepared to live there with only the most necessary equipment… I will forego every comfort I have grown used to and put up with any kind of inconvenience.”
— Johannes Flierl, from My Life and God’s Mission: An Autobiography of Senior Johannes Flierl
This level of commitment was not just noble—it was deeply sacrificial. When disease, particularly malaria, took the lives of nearly a third of the mission team, Flierl stayed. When the Neuendettelsau Mission Society debated pulling out of the region, he wrote again:
“On the surface, it looks as if we, with our whole mission here, are standing at a turning point. But to leave this area would mean unfaithfulness and foolishness after having done so much preliminary work and having settled down…”
Rev. Giegere shared how this conviction bore fruit—not only in the establishment of the Lutheran Church in PNG, but in the transformation of lives across generations.
The most moving moment in the message came when he recounted Flierl’s final farewell in 1918, after more than four decades of service. As he boarded the boat that would take him away from Simbang for the last time, the people gathered to say goodbye:
“A crowd of people… had assembled to shake our hands for the last time in a tearful farewell. As I boarded the vessel, the crowd, in a very moving gesture, joined in singing the hymn ‘Take Thou My Hand and Lead Me’—sung in the Kote language.”
It was not just a song—it was the people’s gift of gratitude and love, their final blessing for the one who had brought them the light of Christ. That hymn, sung in their own heart language, echoed across the water as the boat pulled away. Flierl looked back one last time at the familiar shores, the coconut trees, and the mission buildings—seeds he had helped plant now grown into a strong and living church.
“When I arrived in 1886, these lands had never heard of a missionary or the glad tidings. But as I departed in 1918, the small mustard seed had grown into a mighty tree.”
— Johannes Flierl
Rev. Giegere concluded his sermon by reading the ordination commitment made by every Lutheran pastor—a reminder that the call of God is a lifelong commitment, not just a temporary assignment:
“Are you prepared to let go of all things that distract, to face temptation and hardship, and to follow Jesus even unto death?”
And the response: “Yes, by the help of God.”
But this message wasn’t only for ordained pastors. It was a call to every baptized believer:
“We have made promises—to raise our children in faith, to serve God with our lives, to be faithful disciples. Like Flierl, like so many others, let us not forget that commitment. God is calling us—not to comfort, but to faithfulness. Not to success, but to obedience. Not to ease, but to service.”
All quotes from Johannes Flierl are taken from My Life and God’s Mission: An Autobiography of Senior Johannes Flierl.
📘 My Life and God’s Mission: An Autobiography of Senior Johannes Flierl is available for purchase at the ELCPNG Resource Centre, Ampo. This inspiring book captures the journey, faith, and legacy of the pioneer missionary whose work helped lay the foundation of the Lutheran Church in Papua New Guinea.
To get a copy, email:
📩 rcentre@gutnius.elcpng.org or info@elcpng.org.
