Can you imagine if the government took over all the churches; and created One State Church instead? No other church would be allowed, and if you tried to maintain conservative Lutheran worship and beliefs, your pastors would be arrested and you would be fined.

That’s how it was in the early 1800s in Germany.

A group of Lutherans from an area in eastern Germany called Saxony decided to leave their homes and their vocations and emigrate to the United States.

These men and women would go on to build Lutheran churches, Lutheran elementary schools, high schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, and even Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. They would publish Lutheran materials and gather together other conservative German Lutherans from other parts of the United States. In 1847, just 8 years after emigrating from Germany, they formed the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.

The small mustard seed of their violated consciences and their emigration to America has now grown into a large tree, known today as the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), and it includes over 2,000,000 members, 6,000 congregations, it is in every state of the Union, and it is a leader of conservative Lutheran doctrine around the world. Trinity Lutheran Church is part of this – we are a congregation of the LCMS!