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| Website | www |
The World Mission Prayer League (WMPL) is a pan-Lutheran fellowship committed to Christian prayer as a working method of mission.
WMPL exists as an international community of approximately 6,000 members with formal offices in the United States (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and Canada (Camrose, Alberta). The Prayer League supports approximately 120 workers serving in twenty countries throughout Africa, Asia, North America, and South America.
The first international workers were sent in 1904 by the World Mission Prayer League's predecessor agency, the American Board of the Santal Mission. They joined the Santal Mission work in India, sponsored by sister agencies in Norway and Denmark, that had been under way since 1867. By the mid-1930s, a band of students, pastors, and friends in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area joined together to approach the foreign mission boards of the existing Lutheran synods, but they found no budget for new outreach. In 1937, they organized themselves to accept missionary volunteers and send them into areas of special concern, without the constraint of budgetary limitations. They were committed to providing a way for lay participation in mission, without the requirement of ordination, and to complement the regular work of the Lutheran synods without diverting means or personnel from their programs.
The mission was formally organized on May 25, 1937, as the South American Mission Prayer League. Its first two missionaries left the next year for Bolivia. Later, other volunteers were sent to Central Asia, and eventually to Africa and Eastern Europe. In 1939, the Mission adopted its present name, the World Mission Prayer League, to reflect its growing involvements around the world. In 1945, the League adopted its constitution and incorporated in the state of Minnesota. In 1969, a sister organization, the World Mission Prayer League/Canada, adopted its constitution and incorporated in Edmonton, Alberta.
In 1972, the American Board of the Santal Mission merged with the World Mission Prayer League. The American Board had been founded in Minneapolis in 1894, as the American partner of the Norwegian Board and the Danish Board of the same Mission. The World Mission Prayer League has inherited their particular concern for the Santal people of India and Bangladesh.
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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 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant Lutheran church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. As of 2022, it has approximately 2.9 million baptized members in 8,640 congregations.
The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), also referred to simply as the Wisconsin Synod, is an American Confessional Lutheran denomination of Christianity. Characterized as theologically conservative, it was founded in 1850 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The Church of Iceland, officially the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, is the national church of Iceland. The church is Christian and professes the Lutheran faith. It is a member of the Lutheran World Federation, the Porvoo Communion, the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe, and the World Council of Churches.
The Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) is an evangelical Christian denomination in the Radical Pietistic tradition. The EFCA was formed in 1950 from the merger of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church and the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Free Church Association. It is affiliated with the International Federation of Free Evangelical Churches.
The Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, commonly called the Norwegian Synod, was founded in 1853. It included churches in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
The Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) is a US-based Protestant Christian denomination based in Mankato, Minnesota. It describes itself as a conservative, Confessional Lutheran body. The ELS has 130 congregations and has missions in Peru, Chile, India, South Korea, Ukraine, Czech Republic, and Latvia.
The American Lutheran Church (ALC) was a Christian Protestant denomination in the United States and Canada that existed from 1960 to 1987. Its headquarters were in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Upon its formation in 1960, The ALC designated Augsburg Publishing House, also located in Minneapolis, as the church publisher. The Lutheran Standard was the official magazine of The ALC.
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.
Paul Olaf Bodding was a Norwegian missionary, linguist and folklorist.
Lars Olsen Skrefsrud was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary and language researcher in India.
The Lutheran Church of China was a Lutheran church body in China from 1920 to 1951. It was established as a result of the consultations between the various Lutheran missionary bodies in China that was initiated during the China Centenary Missionary Conference held in Shanghai in 1907. The church survived as an organised body after the Chinese Communist Revolution but was absorbed into the state-backed Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
The Norwegian Lutheran Church in the United States is a general term to describe the Lutheran church tradition developed within the United States by immigrants from Norway.
Claus Lauritz Clausen was an American pioneer Lutheran minister, church leader, military chaplain and politician.
The Taiwan Lutheran Church is one of the six Lutheran bodies in Taiwan. It currently has 80 mission sites nationwide with a total of 11,422 baptized members.
The Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States, commonly known as the Joint Synod of Ohio or the Ohio Synod, was a German-language Lutheran denomination whose congregations were originally located primarily in the U.S. state of Ohio, later expanding to most parts of the United States. The synod was formed on September 14, 1818, and adopted the name Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio and Other States by about 1850. It used that name or slight variants until it merged with the Iowa Synod and the Buffalo Synod in 1930 to form the first American Lutheran Church (ALC), 1930–1960.
North Western Gossner Evangelical Lutheran Church is the fourth largest Lutheran church in India. The NWGEL Church also has a presence in Nepal. Most NWGEL church members are from indigenous and tribal communities. NWGEL Church became an autonomous church on 10 July 1919. On 28 April 1989, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church in India gave provisional membership to NWGEL Church. NWGEL Church is a member of the National Council of Churches in India and local bodies such as Bengal Christian Council, Jharkhand Christian Council, Bihar Christian Council, and Chattishgarh Christian Council.
Hans Peter Boerresen was a Danish missionary to India. He and Norwegian missionary Lars Olsen Skrefsrud were the founders of Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church—centered in North India - Bihar, Assam, and Bengal - extending into Nepal and Bhutan.
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.
Bonnie Lou Jensen is an American former missionary, international relations specialist, and director of the ELCA Global Mission.
