The history of the beginning of our church is not, as one might think, a dry and dusty account of pious individuals from a more secure and moral time. It is instead an account of American religious chaos on the broad scene and, on the smaller scene, doubt and disillusionment of a group of immigrants in Missouri. It is a history of how God worked good through these events.

(The following contains portions of an essay presented by Daniel Preus to the 1997 convention of the Missouri District of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.)

We do not live in an historical vacuum. We simply are connected through our history to those who have gone before us. Separate us from the history, from the confession, ministry, and work of our spiritual and theological ancestors, and we will no longer know why we are, who and what we are today. Nor will we any longer see clearly what we should do.

We can do no better in our attempt to come to grips with the significance of our history than to go back to the very beginning, back to 1839 when the Saxons arrived in St. Louis, back to 1839 when the Prussians arrived in New York, back to 1845 when the Franconians began to arrive in the area of Frankenmuth, Michigan, back to 1847 in Chicago when the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other states was founded. What was American Christianity like when the founders of our church body arrived in this country?

In the early and mid 1800s the United States had experienced what can only be described as a tumultuous time. Many of the more traditional church bodies had experienced great numeric losses to a wave of new cults and sects and movements. Having cast off the shackles of British monarchical rule, an independent spirit had led many to embrace religious movements and figures which called into question and redefined the traditional theology and practice of American denominations. The splintering of American Protestantism compounded the sense of rootlessness and fragmentation, particularly for devout Christians.

It was a period of religious ferment, chaos, and originality unmatched in American history. There were competing claims of old denominations and a host of new ones. Into this extremely turbulent time in the history of American religious life, arrived the Saxons of St. Louis and Perry County. They had been led from Saxony to their new home by their bishop, Pastor Martin Stephan. But after a harrowing time involving the sale of their homes in Saxony, departure from friends and loved ones, criticism and ridicule for their decision to leave, and a long sea voyage with illness and deaths, the Saxons were faced with even yet a more demoralizing turn of events. Their leader, Stephan whom they had trusted, was charged with sexual immorality, mismanagement of funds, and extravagant expenditures by himself.

C.F.W. Walther was dispatched from St. Louis to Perry County to deal with the situation with the result that Martin Stephan was banished from their community. Everyone had been so unnerved by the tempest of events, that literally no one knew where he stood. These poor people were left wondering whether they could be called a church at all. The great physical suffering which they then experienced seemed in the minds of many to underscore the futility of everything they had done in leaving their homes in Saxony and coming to America. The uncertainty of their own situation against the background of the chaotic religious scene in America made the situation ripe for failure. The task which lay before them of establishing a confessional Lutheran church body, especially in view of the circumstances described, was a monumental one.

It fell to Walther to carefully deal with such questions such as "What is the Church?" in the Altenburg debate with Marbach, who contended that there really was no church among the Saxons. The fact that such a church body was in fact formed can be attributed, in the author’s opinion, only to the work and the grace of God. We, as members of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, are heirs of C.F.W. Walther and Walther was Martin Luther’s heir.

The heritage which we have as members of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, we have from Walther and from the other founders of the Missouri Synod who drank from the pure fountain of the Gospel flowing so abundantly, by God’s grace, out of the Reformation. The views which Walther expressed were not his own mental meanderings but were instead drawn carefully from the Lutheran Confessions and later unified the Saxons with the Prussian Lutherans, the Franconian Lutherans, and others. This heritage is evident in the life, practice, and confession of the early Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

The Word of God, the Gospel and the Sacraments, the means of grace are alone that which creates the Church and causes it to grow. "As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth." Isaiah 55:10-11.