North American Lutheran Church
North American Lutheran Church belongs to the Lutheran family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
North American Lutheran Church reports 441 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
Formed 2010.
A 2010 church for Lutherans who wanted neither of the existing answers — more traditional than the ELCA they left, more churchly than a bare network.
Heritage
The North American Lutheran Church was constituted in August 2010 in Columbus, Ohio, by congregations and pastors departing the ELCA after its 2009 decisions permitting clergy in same-sex relationships. Organized through the reform movement Lutheran CORE, the NALC set out to hold the historic Lutheran center: confessionally grounded, traditionally ordered, but leaner than the body its members left. It elects a bishop, keeps a modest national structure, and summarizes itself in four core values — Christ-centered, mission-driven, traditionally-grounded, congregationally-focused. RCMS 2020 counted 441 US congregations.
Theological family
Confessional Lutheran: Scripture as the authoritative Word, the ecumenical creeds and Lutheran confessions, and the great tradition of the church held with intentional seriousness. On marriage and ordination standards the NALC holds the historic positions; it ordains both women and men, continuing the practice its founders knew in the ELCA — a combination that marks its particular ground.
Who decides what
A mixed polity kept deliberately light: congregations own their property and call their pastors; an elected bishop and a small executive council serve teaching, unity and mission; an annual Convocation decides common matters. The founders wanted episcope — real oversight — without the bureaucracy they had left.
What a first-time visitor would find
Recognizably Lutheran worship in most congregations: liturgy, the church year, hymnody and weekly preaching of law and gospel, with local freedom in style. A visitor from an ELCA or LCMS parish would find the shape familiar.
What it has always cared about
The authority of Scripture within the great tradition; congregational discipleship (its Life-to-Life discipleship emphasis); domestic and world mission; theological education through its own seminary network; and care to remain in conversation with global Lutheranism, including younger churches of the Global South.
Its gift to the wider church
A demonstrated third way for a divided Lutheranism — the NALC showed that a departing movement could build a church rather than only a protest, with a bishop, a seminary, and global ties, and it has become a serious conversation partner across the Lutheran world.
Commonly confused with
With LCMC most of all — same exodus era, overlapping membership, but LCMC is an association that refuses churchly structure while the NALC embraces a light version of it. Also, at distance, with the LCMS, which shares many of its moral positions but not its ordination of women or its ELCA lineage.
Range of views inside it
Range shows in worship style, in how congregations relate to former ELCA partners, and in the pace of its discipleship emphasis; its doctrinal center is comparatively tight for so young a body.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation, including the circumstances of its founding or departure, which differ case by case. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "NALC congregations typically…" and yield to the congregation's own materials.
Sources: North American Lutheran Church — vision and core values (North American Lutheran Church) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where North American Lutheran Church churches are on the map
3 North American Lutheran Church congregations appear on The Church Map, across 2 states.
- South Carolina — 2
- Oregon — 1
Moments this body was part of
- 2001–2010 — The Lutheran realignment
Congregations departing the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America formed two new bodies: Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ in 2001, out of the WordAlone movement's objections to the 1999 full-communion agreement with the Episcopal Church, and the North American Lutheran Church in 2010 at Columbus, Ohio, after the ELCA's 2009 decisions on sexuality. Hundreds of congregations realigned; all three bodies continue to confess the Augsburg Confession.