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, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. 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.
The American Association of Lutheran Churches is an American Lutheran church body. It was formed on November 7, 1987, as a continuation of the American Lutheran Church denomination, the majority of which merged with the Lutheran Church in America and the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The AALC offices were originally in Bloomington, Minnesota. The national office moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2007. As of 2008, it had 67 congregations, with about 16,000 members. In 2020, the denomination listed 59 congregations. Its current Presiding Pastor is the Rev. Dr. Cary G. Larson.
Concordia Theological Seminary is a Lutheran seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It offers professional, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees affiliated with training clergy and deaconesses for the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS).
The Concordia University System (CUS) is an organization of six colleges and universities and one satellite campus in the United States that are operated by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). All of the institutions are named "Concordia"—a reference to the Latin title of The Book of Concord, the collection of Lutheran confessions—and all include professional church work programs as part of their curricula. The CUS was formed in 1992. As of 2011, 28,421 students attend Concordia University System institutions.
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.
Seminex is the widely used abbreviation for Concordia Seminary in Exile, which existed from 1974 to 1987 after a schism in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). The seminary in exile was formed due to the ongoing Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy that was dividing Protestant churches in the United States. At issue were foundational disagreements on the authority of Scripture and the role of Christianity. During the 1960s, many clergy and members of the LCMS grew concerned about the direction of education at their flagship seminary, Concordia Seminary, in St. Louis, Missouri. Professors at Concordia Seminary had, in the 1950s and 1960s, begun to utilize the historical-critical method to analyze the Bible rather than the traditional historical-grammatical method that considered scripture to be the inerrant Word of God.
Gerald Bryan Kieschnick is the Chief Executive Officer of Legacy Deo. Kieschnick served as the 12th president of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), being elected to three terms in 2001, 2004, and 2007. He was defeated in his bid for a fourth term by the Rev. Matthew C. Harrison on July 13, 2010, at the 64th Regular Convention of the LCMS, and his presidency ended on August 31, 2010.
The Concordia Lutheran Conference (CLC) is a small organization of Lutheran churches in the United States which formed in 1956. It was a reorganization of some of the churches of the Orthodox Lutheran Conference (OLC), which had been formed in September 1951, in Okabena, Minnesota, following a break with Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). It is the remaining successor of the Orthodox Lutheran Conference. The current president is David T. Mensing, pastor of Peace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oak Forest, Illinois. All members of the board of directors serve one year terms. The CLC has five congregations and is in fellowship with nine mission congregations in Russia and Nigeria.
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.
Patrick Ferry is an American academic administrator and pastor, serving as the president of Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon, Wisconsin, from 1997 to 2021. The higher education institution is affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS).
Kermit Brashear is an American politician and lawyer from Omaha, Nebraska. He was a member of the unicameral Nebraska Legislature from 1995 to 2007, and he served as its speaker from 2005 to 2007.
Concordia University Chicago is a private university in River Forest, Illinois. Formerly a college exclusively for parochial teacher education, Concordia-Chicago now offers more than 100 undergraduate and postgraduate degrees and enrolls more than 5,000 students. The university is a member of the Concordia University System, a nationwide network of colleges and universities affiliated with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS).
KFUO is a non-commercial AM radio station licensed to Clayton, Missouri and serving Greater St. Louis. It has a Christian radio format. KFUO is one of the oldest continuous operating Christian radio stations in the United States, with its first broadcast on October 26, 1924. Owned and operated by The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), its radio studios and offices are in the LCMS headquarters in Kirkwood, Missouri.
KLJY is a commercial-free, listener-supported FM radio station licensed to Clayton, Missouri, and serving Greater St. Louis. It is owned by Gateway Creative Broadcasting, and broadcasts a Christian Contemporary radio format known as 99.1 Joy FM. The radio studios and offices are on Founders Lane in Des Peres, with a St. Louis address. In addition to broadcasting music, the station also sponsors community events and activities around St. Louis.
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.
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.
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.
Karl L. Barth was the eighth president of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1982 to 1992.
The following is a timeline of significant events in the history of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.
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