Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod Churches

Throughout its history, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod has been slow to make changes in worship. Most of the church has resisted the liturgical, charismatic, and inclusive trends of the twentieth century. However, there is a new desire among some to be open to the new ways of worship. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), numbering some 400, 000 members, has congregations in every state of the U. S. and several provinces of Canada. The church body conducts foreign mission work and supports its own worker-training system. Local congregations carry out parochial education on both the elementary and secondary level. The synod requires all its pastors to subscribe without reservation to the doctrines of the inspired Scriptures and to the Lutheran Confessions of the sixteenth century. Pietistic and Confessional Founded in 1850, the Wisconsin Synod has its roots in the pietistic mission societies of nineteenth-century Germany. During its first quarter century, howev…