Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod.

About Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod

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.