A Member of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod Kansas District, South Wichita Circuit
Our name, Immanuel, means “God with us.” In the human flesh of Christ, God came to us.
He lived, died and rose for us and through the Holy Spirit, still swells in and among us. We offer you God’s good news in Christ, the sacraments of His grace and salvation that comes by grace through faith alone.
Lutherans do not subscribe to everything Martin Luther wrote, but we believe that God used him at a critical point in history to steer the church away from certain errors and back onto a true course. At the heart of the Luther-controversy lay the issue of work-righteousness. Luther and others showed the church that the Christian religion at its heart is not about laws and regulations, about our placating God’s wrath or earning his favor. It is about placing our faith in the Lord’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life in Christ. The Reformers’ concern and ours, in other words, has been about THE GOSPEL – the Good News of Jesus Christ. From the Greek word for Gospel, euaggelion, we were not called “Lutherans” in the beginning (a name put on us later by others) but simply “Evangelicals” – people of the Gospel.
Luther and his colleagues neither planned nor desired to start a separate church. Neither was it to reform the church – a feat which they believed God alone could accomplish, inwardly with his Word and Spirit. Instead, they tried to awaken church authorities to hear anew God’s Word, and to rediscover the Gospel that had gotten buried beneath all kinds of superstitions and human requirements. We believe, as our Creeds say, that in truth there is only one Christian church on earth. Jesus Christ has one flock on earth, consisting of all those sheep who know and follow his voice. We also believe it a sad thing, therefore, that clashes over what God’s Word teaches have resulted in divisions. But while divergent confessions of the faith make different denominations a sad necessity, we are committed to dialogue with other Christian churches, in order to rejoice in what we have in common and work toward a greater external unity.
The Book of Concord
During the Reformation Martin Luther and others wrote documents to publish their faith and identify issues needing to be addressed. When to these was added another document written after Luther’s death, the whole collection became known in 1580 as the Lutheran Confessions, otherwise known as The Book of Concord. It remains the standard by which a church is identified as Evangelical Lutheran.
Lutheran Synods
In North America Lutheranism established itself through waves of European immigrants settling in the New World. These Lutherans came from different lands (chiefly Denmark, Germany, Norway, and Sweden) and during different eras (from early colonial to the mid-1800s). As they settled in different parts of the United States, they formed various “synods,” organizations whose member congregations and pastors communed together, preached in each others’ pulpits, sponsored missionary efforts, and trained pastors.
The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod
…began in 1847 as Die Evangelische-Lutherische Synod von Missouri, Ohio, und anderen Staaten (The Evangelical-Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States). As the reference to the state suggests, we started out in Missouri – specifically, south of St. Louis and close to the Mississippi River. Over the next century and a half the Missouri Synod grew and divided into districts, which in turn were divided into local or area circuits for visitation. When a mission to Wichita was first conceived, Kansas was included in the Synod’s Western District, but soon the growth of churches in Kansas led to the formation of a Kansas District – to which Immanuel still belongs.
909 South Market Street, Wichita, KS 67211 | 316.264.0639
Sunday Worship 9:30 A.M | Sunday School 11:00 A.M.