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adcrucem.comThe State of the LCMS is one project in a wider Ad Crucem family. Below is the lineup, in case you wandered in here from a single chart and want to know who is publishing this.
Church supplies, gifts, and goods for the Christian life. Serving congregations and individuals with quality liturgical and devotional items.
adcrucem.comPublishing theological works, devotional literature, and educational resources rooted in the Lutheran confessional tradition.
Ad Crucem BooksData journalism and confessional commentary from a Lutheran perspective. Original research, rankings, and analysis covering the intersection of church life and digital media.
adcrucem.newsFour readings of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, built entirely from documents the Synod publishes about itself. Every figure carries its source and every gap in the record is marked as a gap.
lcms.adcrucem.newsSearchable public reference for the 69th Regular Convention of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Every overture, committee, report, and named person, cross-referenced against the 2023 record.
lcms2026.adcrucem.newsA digital companion to the Church Year, with propers, lectionary, and devotional notes.
missal.adcrucem.appData-driven coverage of Lutheran voices on YouTube. Subscriber tallies, video output, and audience trajectory.
luthertube.adcrucem.appVitality & Sustainability for the Modern Church
A comprehensive assessment framework that evaluates 81 questions across seven dimensions of organizational health, from financial controls and governance to membership trends and community engagement. Know where you stand. Know where to focus.
ecclesiapulse.comEvery figure is drawn from primary LCMS documents: sixteen Program Budget Summaries covering FY2008 to FY2024, five Annual Reports, and the District Visit briefing sections carrying the FY2025 financials and the long-term statistical trends. Each chart names the document it came from, and each carries a table of its own numbers for anyone who wants to check the arithmetic.
Dollars are restated to 2025 using CPI-U annual averages wherever a chart is marked as real. Budget projections and audited actuals are labelled separately and never plotted on one line, because the Synod routinely underspends its budget, by almost $10 million in FY2024 alone. Contributor-receipt giving tables are not GAAP figures, so they are kept clear of the audited statements.
Gaps in the record stay gaps. No annual report was published covering FY2022, the statistical report did not run for 2017, and the 2012 report omitted a congregation count. Those years break the series rather than getting filled by interpolation.
LCMS annual reports carry the previous calendar year's statistics, a lag that several published analyses get wrong. Charts here are labelled by statistical year rather than by the year printed on the report cover.
Coverage is opinion and protected commentary, not adjudicated investigative reporting. Read the Terms of Service for the full editorial and legal stance.
This microsite is published by Ad Crucem News — an independent Lutheran publication writing for the church from outside the synodical press cycle. Original research, rankings, and analysis on the life and work of the Christian church, anchored in Scripture and the Confessions. No institutional interference, no advertiser pressure, no grant strings. Subscribe at adcrucem.news, or learn about the wider family of services on the about page.
Source documents are LCMS publications, all of them public. Errors are the author's; corrections are welcome.
© 2026 Arboradix LLC d/b/a Ad Crucem. Independent editorial coverage. Not affiliated with, endorsed or authorized by The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.