The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With almost 1.7 million members as of 2024, it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). In 2025, Pew Research Center estimated that 1.1 percent of US adults, approximately 2.9 million people, identified with the LCMS and evangelical Lutheranism in contrast with 2 percent, or approximately 5.2 million people, who identified with the ELCA and mainline Lutheranism. The LCMS was organized in 1847 at a meeting in Chicago 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 LCMS has congregations in all 50 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces, but over half of its members are located in the Midwest. It is a member of the International Lutheran Council and is in altar and pulpit fellowship with most of that group's members. The LCMS is headquartered in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb west of St. Louis and is divided into 35 districts—33 of which are geographic and two (the English and the SELC) non-geographic. The incumbent president is Matthew C. Harrison, who took office on September 1, 2010.
History
Origins The Missouri Synod emerged from several communities of German Lutheran immigrants during the 1830s and 1840s. Isolated Germans in dense forests of the American frontier in Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan were brought together and ministered to by missionary F. C. D. Wyneken. A communal emigration from Saxony under Bishop Martin Stephan created a community in Perry County, Missouri, and in St. Louis. In Michigan and Ohio, missionaries sent by Wilhelm Löhe ministered to scattered congregations and founded German Lutheran communities in Frankenmuth, Michigan, and the Saginaw Valley of Michigan.
Saxon immigration
In the 19th-century German Kingdom of Saxony, Lutheran pastor Martin Stephan and many of his followers found themselves increasingly at odds with Rationalism, Christian ecumenism, and the prospect of a forced unionism of the Lutheran church with the Reformed church. In the neighboring Kingdom of Prussia, the Prussian Union of 1817 put in place what they considered non-Lutheran communion and baptismal doctrine and practice.Baepler, Walter A., A Century of Grace: A History of the Missouri Synod, 1847–1947 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1947), 9-12. In order to freely practice their Christian faith in accordance with the Lutheran confessions outlined in the Book of Concord, Stephan and between 600 and 700 other Saxon Lutherans left for the United States in November 1838.Forster, Walter O., Zion on the Mississippi (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 199f.
Their ships arrived between December 31, 1838, and January 20, 1839, in New Orleans with one ship lost at sea.Baepler, 28; Forster, 202–217. Most of the remaining immigrants left almost immediately, with the first group arriving in St. Louis on January 19, 1839.Forster, 203. The final group, led by Stephan, remained in New Orleans for ten days, possibly to wait for the passengers of the lost ship Amalia.Forster, 218. The immigrants ultimately settled in Perry County, Missouri, and in and around St. Louis. Stephan was initially the bishop of the new settlement, but he soon became embroiled in charges of corruption and sexual misconduct with members of the congregation and was expelled from the settlement, leaving C. F. W. Walther as the leader of the colony.Lueker, 1408
During that period, there was considerable debate within the settlement over the proper status of the church in the New World: whether it was a new church or whether it remained within the Lutheran hierarchy in Germany. Walther's view that they could consider themselves a new church prevailed.Baepler, 46ff.
Löhe missionaries
Beginning in 1841, the parish pastor in Neuendettelsau, Bavaria—Wilhelm Löhe—inspired by appeals for aid to the German immigrants in North America, began to solicit funds for missionary work among them. He also began training men to become pastors and teachers, sending his first two students—Adam Ernst and Georg Burger—to America on August 5, 1842.Graebner, Theodore, "The Loehe Foundations" in H. W. T. Dau, ed., Ebenezer: Reviews of the Work of the Missouri Synod during Three Quarters of a Century (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1922), 78–81. Löhe ultimately sent over 80 pastors and students of theology to America; these pastors founded and served congregations throughout Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana.Pless, John T., "Wilhelm Loehe and the Missouri Synod: Forgotten Paternity or Living Legacy?" (paper presented to the International Loehe Society assembled at Wartburg Theological Seminary, July 12. 2005), 6.
Löhe also led an early and largely abortive effort to send missionaries to convert the Native Americans. In 1844 and 1845, he solicited colonists to form a German Lutheran settlement in Michigan, with the thought that this settlement would also serve as the base for missionary activity among the Native Americans. The colonists left Germany on April 20, 1845, under the leadership of Pastor August Crämer, and arrived in Saginaw County, Michigan, in August of that year. They founded several villages—Frankenmuth, Frankenlust, Frankentrost, and Frankenhilf (now known as Richville)—and worked to convert the Native Americans. They had limited success, however, and the villages became nearly exclusively German settlements within a few years.Graebner, 87–93.
In addition to sending pastors, theological students, and colonists to America, Löhe played an instrumental role in the formation of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, raising funds for the new institution and sending eleven theological students and a professor from Germany to help found it. The seminary's first president, Wilhelm Sihler, had also been sent by Löhe to America several years before.
Due to Löhe's zeal and labors, LCMS' first president, C. F. W. Walther, said of him, "Next to God, it is Pastor Loehe to whom our Synod is indebted for its happy beginning and rapid growth in which it rejoices; it may well honor him as its spiritual father. It would fill the pages of an entire book to recount even briefly what for many years this man, with tireless zeal in the noblest unselfish spirit, has done for our Lutheran Church and our Synod in particular."Erich H. Heintzen, Love Leaves Home: Wilhelm Loehe and the Missouri Synod (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973), 73.
Founding and early years
In 1844 and 1845, these two groups (the Saxons and the Löhe men) as well as Wyneken and one of his assistants began discussing the possibility of forming a new, confessional Lutheran church body. As a result of the discussions, the Löhe missionaries and Wyneken and his assistant (F. W. Husmann) decided to leave their synods. Planning meetings were held in St. Louis in May 1846 and in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in July 1846.W. G. Polack, Fathers and Founders (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1938), 66–68. On April 26, 1847, twelve pastors representing fourteen German Lutheran congregations met in Chicago and officially founded the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States. Walther became the fledgling denomination's first president.Baepler, 98f.
The synod was quickly noted for its conservatism and self-professed orthodoxy. The synod's constitution required all members (both pastors and congregations) to pledge fealty to the entire Book of Concord, to reject unionism and syncretism of every kind, to use only doctrinally pure books in both church and school, and to provide for the Christian education of their children.Polack, 72f. Among other things, these requirements meant that altar and pulpit fellowship was usually restricted to those Lutheran congregations and synods who were in complete doctrinal agreement with the Missouri Synod.Baepler, 100.
The LCMS' conservatism soon drew it into conflict with other Lutheran synods, the majority of which were then experimenting with so-called "American Lutheranism". In addition, the LCMS also quickly became embroiled in a dispute with the Buffalo Synod and its leader, Johannes Andreas August Grabau, over the proper understanding of the church and the ministry. Within a few years, this conflict led to a separation between the Missouri Synod and Löhe, as Löhe's views were close to those of Grabau.D. H. Steffens, "The Doctrine of the Church and the Ministry" in H. W. T. Dau, ed., Ebenezer: Reviews of the Work of the Missouri Synod during Three Quarters of a Century (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1922), 150ff.
Despite these conflicts, the Missouri Synod experienced fairly rapid growth in its early years, leading to the subdivision of the synod into four district synods (Central, Eastern, Northern, and Western) in 1854. This growth was due largely to the synod's efforts, under the leadership of its second president, F. C. D. Wyneken, to care for German immigrants, help them find a home among other Germans, build churches and parochial schools, and train pastors and teachers. The synod continued these outreach efforts throughout the 19th century, becoming the largest Lutheran church body in the United States by 1888.Matthias Sheeleigh, ed., The Lutheran Almanac and Year-Book for the Year of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 1889 (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 20–21. Note that this is the first year the LCMS was larger than all of the constituent synods of the General Council combined. If comparing the LCMS to individual synods within the General Synod or General Council, it had been the largest American Lutheran synod since around the year 1870. By the synod's fiftieth anniversary in 1897, it had grown to 687,000 members.Baepler, 217.
Synodical Conference
Between 1856 and 1859, the Missouri Synod hosted a series of four free conferences in order to explore the possibility of entering into fellowship agreements with other conservative Lutheran synods. As a result of these conferences, the LCMS entered into fellowship with the Norwegian Synod in 1857. In 1872, these two synods joined the Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and Illinois Synods, which were also conservative Lutheran bodies, to form the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America.Baepler, 160.
In 1876, the constituent synods of the Synodical Conference considered a plan to reorganize into a single unified church body with a single seminary. Some preliminary moves were made in this direction (including the 1880 absorption of the Illinois Synod into the LCMS' Illinois District), but opposition from some synods postponed the complete implementation of this plan, and the Predestinarian Controversy of the 1880s scuttled the plan entirely. As a result of the controversy, several pastors and congregations withdrew from the Ohio Synod to form the Concordia Synod; this synod merged with the LCMS in 1886.
Efforts were made in the 1920s to establish fellowship with the Ohio, Iowa, and Buffalo synods. Representatives from the synods formulated the Chicago Theses as a for agreement, but the 1929 LCMS synodical convention did not accept them and instead created a committee that, in 1932, produced the Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod. After the Ohio, Iowa, and Buffalo synods merged in 1930 to form the first American Lutheran Church (ALC), representatives from the ALC and the LCMS came to agreement on the Brief Statement and the ALC's Declaration in 1938, but again no further action was taken.
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