A data series

The State of the LCMS

Four readings of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, built entirely from documents the Synod publishes about itself: sixteen program budget summaries, five annual reports, the district-visit briefings and the statistical yearbooks. Every figure carries its source. Every gap in the record is marked as a gap.

  1. Part One

    Ledger of a Shrinking Church

    Record net assets sitting on top of an unrestricted revenue base cut in half. Eighteen years of budgets and audits, ten figures.

    10 figures · published
  2. Part Two

    The Worker Pipeline

    Seminary enrolment, the roster, and the arithmetic of replacing 5,500 pastors and 4,800 teachers.

    In preparation
  3. Part Three

    Schools and the Concordias

    Eight universities to six, a third of the system budget gone, and 1,700 preschools nobody counts.

    In preparation
  4. Part Four

    The Mission Field

    Ninety-one missionaries, forty-three partner churches, and where the restricted money actually goes.

    In preparation
A note on method. LCMS annual reports carry statistics for the previous calendar year — a lag that several published analyses of the Synod get wrong, shifting every membership figure by a year. Charts here are labelled by statistical year, not report year. Dollar figures are deflated to 2025 using CPI-U annual averages. Budget figures and audited actuals are kept separate throughout, because the Synod routinely underspends its budget.
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Data journalism and Christian commentary and opinion from a Lutheran perspective.

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Source documents are LCMS publications, all of them public. Errors are the author's; corrections are welcome.

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