History of the LWML

Written by Marlys Taege Moberg

“There’s no question the church is behind you because in so many ways you are ahead of the church.” With those words, a Lutheran historian applauded the progress of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League (LWML) since its founding in 1942. Its roots, however, go back nearly a century earlier.

Beginning in the 1850s, women of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) started local auxiliaries to meet the needs of people – mending clothes for seminarians, equipping hospitals, establishing schools, developing convalescent and retirement homes, assisting orphanages and residences for people with disabilities, gathering clothing, furniture, and food for indigents, and funding mission endeavors at home and abroad.

Not until the 1920s, however, did members of congregational societies begin to coordinate their efforts by uniting in state and regional leagues. Oklahoma was first in 1928, but it took more than a decade before official approval was granted for a national LCMS women’s organization.

Although the US was at war and travel was difficult, the founding convention, held July 7 and 8, 1942 in Chicago, was attended by over 100 women from 15 districts. The 28 delegates adopted a constitution, approved a name, chose two projects and established a Literature Committee to publish books, a national magazine, tracts, and programs. They also determined that 25% of the mission gifts collected in local societies would be given to the national organization and 75% used for district projects.

The purpose of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League ( LWML), delegates agreed, was to develop a greater mission consciousness among women (“missionary education, missionary inspiration, and missionary service”) and to gather funds for mission projects for which no adequate provision was made in the LCMS budget. “Missionary” meant the individual member, who was to “win and hold souls for Christ the Master, visit the sick and the shut-ins, relieve the needy, and cultivate the spirit of sisterly good cheer and fellowship.”

Mite boxes were selected as the vehicle for collecting funds. Those contributions have supported Christian outreach in 42 countries on five continents. They have provided chapels and mission headquarters, hospitals and medicine, Bibles and magazines, schools and equipment, jeeps and radio transceivers, missionary vacation homes and Bible translation centers, airplanes and videos, and the list could go on and on. By 2005, international LWML mission grants (including money for mission in reach to women) totaled more than $18,500,000. Adding the 75% in district grants and over $2,000,000 distributed from bequests and anniversary thank offerings brings LWML gifts for the Lord’s service to more than $76,000,000.

But, the blessing of the LWML, now also known as Lutheran Women in Mission, goes far beyond the millions raised for missions. Its benefits can be seen in faith deepened through Bible studies, in confidence built through leadership training, in the befriending of career missionaries, in blankets and clothing gathered for the impoverished, in food shared with the hungry, and, above all, in the friendships nurtured and the lives changed by sharing the love of Jesus Christ.