Feature

United in Word and Song

Lutherans in Indonesia and the United States celebrate the creation of a new hymnal in the Indonesian language.

Story by Megan K. Mertz | Photography by Erik M. Lunsford | Spring 2025

As Bishop Jon Albert Saragih and the Rev. Eben Ezer Aruan held the Buku Ibadah Lutheran in their hands for the first time, they could barely contain their joy. Saragih later held the book up and told a room full of Indonesian seminary students that he had been near tears as he eagerly flipped through the volume’s pages.

“I’m so proud of it, and [I’m] glad because our work is not in vain,” he said, as Aruan translated for the international visitors who had joined them that day.

Bishop Jon Albert Saragih (center) reacts to the new Lutheran hymnal alongside the Rev. Matthew Wood and the Rev. Eben Ezer Aruan at the headquarters and seminary of the Indonesian Christian Lutheran Church.

Christianity in Indonesia

The Buku Ibadah Lutheran, or Lutheran Worship Book in English, is the culmination of more than 10 years of work.

International workers with The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) had long been interested in creating a truly Lutheran hymnal in the Indonesian language. But the project didn’t gain much traction until 2014, when leaders of the Indonesian Christian Lutheran Church (Gereja Kristen Luther Indonesia, or GKLI) reached out to the LCMS and expressed an interest in restarting a dialogue between the two church bodies.

The GKLI — which has some 20,000 members, primarily from the Batak people group — was trying to figure out how to embrace its Lutheran identity and differentiate itself from the larger Christian churches around it.

Although Indonesia is predominantly a Muslim country, most of the Batak people are Christian now thanks to the efforts of Danish missionary Ludwig Nommensen, who was sent to North Sumatra in 1862. Today, several of the sites where Nommensen once lived and worked are local tourist attractions.

Lake Toba in North Sumatra, a popular tourist destination in Indonesia.

“The Batak are one of the most successful missions in all of Asia,” said the Rev. Matthew Wood, who has served with the LCMS in Indonesia since 2018. While Christianity has been slow to spread in other places, you can’t travel far in this area of North Sumatra without passing a Christian church.

The GKLI’s founding bishop, the Rev. Jethro Sinaga, did not plan to start his own church. While serving as a pastor in Indonesia’s largest Christian church body in the 1960s, he spent time studying at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., where he gained a new understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When he brought these ideas back to Indonesia, the church body leadership asked him to leave. Some 30 congregations left with him to form the GKLI, and they have been growing in their understanding of Lutheran doctrine ever since.

A woman walks through the rain near a GKLI congregation in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

Creating a Hymnal

The main work on the Buku Ibadah Lutheran took place over a five-year period under the supervision of a committee that included Wood; Deaconess Sandra Rhein, a sacred music educator with the LCMS; and a rotating group of 10 GKLI pastors and church musicians.

Rhein was brought in as coordinating editor early on. Over the last 10 years or so, she has worked on hymnals in Swahili, Amharic, Mandarin, Spanish and Tamil. Working under LCMS international workers and the local church body’s hymnal committee, she guides them through the process, makes sure all pieces are completed, seeks any necessary copyright permissions, and enters the finished components into the software that has been chosen.

One of the most difficult aspects, she said, is finding translators who are able to deftly translate the theological concepts and poetic language of hymns into another language. For the Indonesian hymnal, Rhein also had to learn a form of numbered musical notation common in Asia — something that came as a complete surprise to her on her first trip to Indonesia.

“We made amazingly good progress [on my first visit], and it was all very new and exciting,” Rhein said. “Then we got to the second-to-last day, and the young man I was working with said, ‘So, when do we do it in our music notation?’ And I said, ‘What?’”

Despite the difficulties and surprises, Rhein finds great joy in her work: “The GKLI came to us and asked us to help them become more Lutheran. How could I say no?”

Early on, the committee decided to produce the hymnal in the country’s official language — known as Bahasa Indonesia or simply Indonesian — even though most GKLI congregations continue to worship in the Batak language.

“The LCMS has been clear that we don’t want to change [their use of Batak],” Wood said, noting that most church bodies in Indonesia retain their tribal identity. “But the GKLI wants to reach out beyond the borders of the Batak people, so we decided to work together on a hymnal in Indonesian.”

Saragih affirmed this decision: “This [hymnal] is a tool to introduce about Lutheranism, the theology, the understanding of the Word of God.” Every part is designed to help God’s people proclaim the forgiveness of sins and salvation they receive through faith in Jesus Christ, as they lift their prayers, praises and thanksgivings up to God. Thus, the committee chose the language that would make it most accessible to their fellow countrymen, no matter what tribe they come from.

The Buku Ibadah Lutheran includes everything that you would expect to find in a Lutheran hymnal: lectionaries, psalms, orders of worship including Matins and Vespers, and hymns. There are two orders for Sunday morning worship: one that is traditional for the GKLI and one that is consistent with the historical pattern of worship for the worldwide Christian church.

The hymnal committee sifted through hundreds of hymns and songs that had been translated by other groups. In total, they compiled 320 hymns, including about 35 that were translated — primarily by Aruan — into Indonesian specifically for this project. A few of these newly translated hymns include “Of the Father’s Love Begotten”; “Lord, Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word”; and “O God, My Faithful God.”

Watch Rev. Wood talk about his work.

‘Beyond Sunday Morning’

In mid-November, Wood delivered the first print run of 220 hymnals to the GKLI headquarters and seminary in remote Sihabonghabong, Indonesia. The next day, approximately 50 GKLI pastors and staff members gathered in an open-air meeting room at a hotel in nearby Dolok Sanggul for the dedication of the hymnal and a pastors’ conference.

As a cat sauntered down the aisle of the meeting room, Wood introduced the Buku Ibadah Lutheran and began teaching the pastors about its contents. During the conference, the pastors sang Matins and Vespers together, and GKLI leaders taught them how to chant the psalms — something that the pastors on the hymnal committee were adamant about, despite initial hesitation from Wood and Rhein.

“Both Sandra and I said, ‘Is that really a good idea?’ It’s a really old European way of singing that maybe doesn’t match well with the life of Christianity in Indonesia,” Wood recalled.

But the members of the hymnal committee were not deterred. In fact, they were excited to find out that they could sing all 150 psalms by learning just six tones. On Nov. 13 and in the days that followed, those gathered at the conference shared that enthusiasm as they learned about the new hymnal, asked questions and joined their voices together in chanting the psalms.

All those in attendance received a copy of the hymnal. They also were asked, as they begin using the hymnal, to report back with any errors they find in its pages. After another round of revisions, Wood is planning to print 3,000 more copies to be distributed throughout the GKLI’s congregations.

“This is more than a songbook; it is a worship book,” Wood said as he introduced the hymnal to the group. “The others [you’ve used] are only songbooks. The goal of this hymnal is to draw you and your family into a devotional and worship life that extends beyond Sunday morning and throughout the whole week.”

Learn More

Meet the Rev. Matthew Wood

Meet Deaconess Sandra Rhein

Learn more about the work in Indonesia

Pray with Us

Almighty Father, to whom choirs of angels and the hosts of heaven sing continual praise, we give thanks for the gift of a Lutheran hymnal for our brothers and sisters in Indonesia, and we pray that You would grant them continued unity and faithful proclamation through their shared song; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Megan K. Mertz

Managing editor of Lutherans Engage the World and chief copy editor for LCMS Communications.