The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 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.
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, was a German-born Lutheran clergyman and missionary. Born in Einbeck, Muhlenberg immigrated to the Province of Pennsylvania in response to demands from Lutherans for missionary work in the colony. Integral to the founding of the first Lutheran church body or denomination in North America, Muhlenberg is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States. Muhlenberg and his wife Anna Maria had a large family, several of whom had a significant impact on colonial life in North America as pastors, military officers, and politicians. His and Anna Maria's descendants continued to be active in Pennsylvania and national political life.
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.
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 Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, often known simply as the Synodical Conference, was an association of Lutheran synods that professed a complete adherence to the Lutheran Confessions and doctrinal unity with each other. Founded in 1872, its membership fluctuated as various synods joined and left it. Due to doctrinal disagreements with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) left the conference in 1963. It was dissolved in 1967 and the other remaining member, the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, merged into the LCMS in 1971.
The Evangelical Synod of North America, before 1927 German Evangelical Synod of North America, in German (Deutsche) Evangelische Synode von Nord-Amerika, was a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States existing from the mid-19th century until its 1934 merger with the Reformed Church in the United States to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. This church merged with the Congregational Christian Churches in 1957 to create the United Church of Christ.
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.
John Christian Frederick Heyer was the first missionary sent abroad by Lutherans in the United States. He founded the Guntur Mission in Andhra Pradesh, India. "Father Heyer" is commemorated as a missionary in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on November 7, along with Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Ludwig Ingwer Nommensen.
Justus Falckner was an early American Lutheran minister and the first Lutheran pastor to be ordained within the region that became the United States. Falckner's published works include Grondlycke Onderricht, which first appeared in the Dutch language during 1708. This was the first Lutheran catechism to be published in North America. He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church on November 24 together with Jehu Jones and William Passavant.
Redeemer Lutheran Church is a congregation of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) in Elmhurst, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. Founded in 1928, there were 495 baptized members. Three of Redeemer's pastors held rather long tenures; Rev. Worth Setzer served for nearly 31 years, Rev. George Bornemann for 17 years, Rev. Richard Drews for 26 years. Rev. Robert Fitzpatrick served for 7 years. Moreso recently, Rev. Scott Stiegemeyer served at Redeemer for five years; the current pastor is Rev. Anthony Oliphant, who was installed in the autumn of 2015.
Zion Lutheran Church is a historic Lutheran church located along Prospect Avenue near downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Formed in the 1840s, the congregation built the present building shortly after 1900, along with an adjacent church school. Both buildings have been named historic sites. The school is no longer open.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Malaysia or ELCM is one of the four Lutheran bodies in Malaysia. It currently has 21 congregations nationwide with a total of 3,650 members.
Matthew Carl Harrison is the 13th and current president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). 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. In June 2023, he was elected to a fifth term with 52.32% of the first ballot vote. He is the first LCMS president elected to a fifth term since 1947.
Salem Lutheran Church is an LCMS church in Farrar, Missouri.
The Lutheran Church in Korea or LCK is a confessional Lutheran denomination in the Republic of Korea and the only Lutheran denomination in South Korea. Unusual for a confessional Lutheran church, the LCK is not just a member of the confessional International Lutheran Council but also the mainline Lutheran World Federation.
Lutheranism was first introduced to Mexico in the 1850s, when German-American Lutherans began serving German immigrants in Mexico, though mission work among the non-German population in Mexico did not begin until the 1940s. Today there are five Lutheran church bodies in Mexico—the Mexican Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Synod of Mexico, the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Church—Mexico, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mexico (unaffiliated), and the Lutheran Apostolic Alliance of Mexico (unaffiliated)—and several independent congregations.
Frederick William Stellhorn, an American Lutheran theologian, was born in Brüninghorstedt, a community in Warmsen the Landkreis of Hannover, in Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen), Germany.
Louis John Sieck was a Lutheran minister. He was the president of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis from 1943 to 1952.
Immanuel Lutheran College was an educational institution of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America whose main purpose was to train Black men to be pastors and both men and women to be teachers. It was founded in Concord, North Carolina, in 1903 and relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1905. The college was closed in 1961 when the Synodical Conference decided that the training of Blacks should be integrated into the educational institutions of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the largest member of the conference. The former campus was purchased by North Carolina A&T State University.
Heinrich "Henry" Sieck was a German-American Lutheran minister, writer, and college president.
