The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With over 1.8 million members, it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States. The LCMS was organized in 1847 at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois, as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, a name which partially reflected the geographic locations of the founding congregations.
Ernst Wilhelm Theodor Herrmann Hengstenberg, was a German Lutheran churchman and neo-Lutheran theologian from an old and important Dortmund family.
Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther was a German-American Lutheran minister. He was the first president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and its most influential theologian. He is commemorated by that church on its Calendar of Saints on May 7. He has been described as a man who sacrificed his homeland, his health, and nearly his life for the freedom to speak freely, to believe freely, and to live freely, by emigrating from Germany to the United States.
Concordia Seminary is a Lutheran seminary in Clayton, Missouri. The institution's primary mission is to train pastors, deaconesses, missionaries, chaplains, and church leaders for the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). Founded in 1839, the seminary initially resided in Perry County, Missouri. In 1849, it was moved to St. Louis, and in 1926, the current campus was built.
Martin Stephan (1777–1846) was pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Dresden, Germany during the early 19th century. He organized the Saxon emigration to the United States in the early 19th century.
Friedrich Conrad Dietrich Wyneken was a missionary pastor in the United States. He also served for fourteen years as the second president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and helped found Concordia Theological Seminary.
The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) is organized into 35 districts, 33 of which are defined along geographic lines. Each district has a president who oversees the congregations in his district, which are further subdivided into local circuits. The position of president is roughly analogous to the role of bishop in many church bodies, but LCMS doctrine supports a generally congregationalist polity as opposed to an exclusively hierarchical governance.
Wilhelm Sihler was a German American Lutheran minister. A proponent for Christian education, Wilhelm Sihler founded Concordia Theological Seminary, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Concordia Publishing House (CPH), founded in 1869, is the official publishing arm of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). Headquartered in St Louis, Missouri, at 3558 S. Jefferson Avenue, CPH publishes the synod's official monthly magazine, The Lutheran Witness, and the synod's hymnals, including The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), Lutheran Worship (1982), and Lutheran Service Book (2006). It publishes a wide range of resources for churches, schools, and homes and is the publisher of the world's most widely circulated daily devotional resource, Portals of Prayer. Its children's books, known as Arch Books, have been published in millions of copies. Concordia Publishing House is the oldest publishing company west of the Mississippi River and the world's largest distinctly Lutheran publishing house.
The Eastern District is one of the 35 districts of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), and covers: most of upstate New York; Pennsylvania, with the exception of York and Lancaster Counties; and Garrett County at the western corner of the Maryland panhandle. The rest of New York, including New York City, is in the Atlantic District; York and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania and the remainder of Maryland are in the Southeastern District. In addition, sixteen congregations in the Eastern District's area are in the non-geographic English District, and eleven Pennsylvania congregations are in the SELC District. The Eastern District includes 135 congregations and missions, subdivided into 16 circuits, as well as 30 preschools and 13 elementary schools. Baptized membership in Eastern District congregations is approximately 40,000.
Johannes Andreas August Grabau was an influential German-American Old Lutheran pastor and theologian. He is usually mentioned as J. A. A. Grabau.
Matthew Carl Harrison is the 13th and current president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. He was first elected to the presidency on July 13, 2010 at the synod's 64th regular convention in Houston, Texas. Harrison officially took office on September 1, 2010, and was formally installed in a service on September 11, 2010, at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He was elected by a 54 - 45% margin on the first ballot. He was elected to a second three-year term following a first ballot victory in the church body's first online presidential election in July 2013. He was elected to a third three-year term in June 2016, having received 56.96 percent of the vote on the first ballot. In June 2019, Harrison was elected to a fourth three-year term with 51.76 percent of the vote on the first ballot.
Johann Konrad Wilhelm Löhe was a pastor of the Lutheran Church, Confesional Lutheran writer, and is often regarded as being a founder of the deaconess movement in Lutheranism and a founding sponsor of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). From the small town of Neuendettelsau, he sent pastors to North America, Australia, New Guinea, Brazil, and the Ukraine. His work for a clear confessional basis within the Bavarian church sometimes led to conflict with the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. His chief concern was that a parish find its life in the eucharist, and from that source evangelism and social ministries would flow. Many Lutheran congregations in Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa were either founded or influenced by missionaries sent by Löhe. He is commemorated on 2 January by the calendars of both the LCMS and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Dresden is an abandoned village in Brazeau Township in Perry County, Missouri, United States.
Concordia Lutheran Church is an LCMS church in Frohna, Missouri.
Trinity Lutheran Church is a member congregation of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) in Altenburg, Missouri.
The Saxon Lutheran immigration of 1838–39 was a migration of Confessional German Lutherans seeking religious freedom in the United States in the early 19th century. The migrants were among the original founders of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.
Frederick William Stellhorn, an American Lutheran theologian, was born in Brüninghorstedt, a community in Warmsen the Landkreis of Hannover, in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany.
Trinity Lutheran Church is a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) congregation in St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. It is considered the "mother church" of the LCMS.
