ELCNA

## Northwestern Minnesota Synod - Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America

### "God's Work. Our Hands."

* **Main Offices:** Synod Offices on Concordia College Campus , Moorhead MN 56562
* **Current Bishop:**Rev. Wolfgang Koeller (since 2067)
* **Mission Statement:**The purpose of the NWMN synod is to serve God’s mission by focusing its entire life on calling, raising up, forming in faith and spiritual leadership and sending the next generation of disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.We have a heart for God’s Mission to redeem creation. The synod is the hands and feet of God’s mission. As Christ followers led by God’s Holy Spirit we…
...join in that work to bring hope and healing, reconciliation and redemption to the world.
...pray and are guided by the message of scripture to discern God’s will in NWMN synod.
...live out the Greatest Commandment of Matthew 22, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind … and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
...live out the Great Commission in Matthew 28 to “Go therefore and make disciple of all nations.”
...are missional pioneers, led out of our comfort zones by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness of the communities and contexts God has called us to serve.
...are not a “settled” church comfortable with the status quo, but rather a sent church that sees itself as on the move for the sake of the gospel and the sake of the world.
* **Beliefs:**The ELCNA  is the largest denomination of Lutheran Christianity on the continent and as such is a Protestant Christian sect that shares the common traits of Protestant Christianity: Monotheist, with an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator deity, who's son, Jesus of Nazareth was killed on a cross and came back from the dead in order as the means of saving mortal souls from damnation, as recorded in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Lutheranism, in specific, derives from the writings and thinking of Martin Luther (1483-1546).

For the Lutheran tradition, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is the material principle upon which all other teachings rest.

Luther came to understand justification as being entirely the work of God. Against the teaching of his day that the believers are made righteous through the infusion of God's grace into the soul, Luther asserted that Christians receive that righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not only comes from Christ, it actually *is* the righteousness of Christ, and remains outside of us but is merely imputed to us (rather than infused into us) through faith. "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills the law," said Luther. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ". Thus faith, for Luther, is a gift from God, and ". . .a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it." This faith grasps Christ's righteousness and appropriates it for itself in the believer's heart.

* **Territory:**The greater ELCNA has synods in the UCAS , CAS , PCC , California , Salish-Shidhe and Niswi-mishkodewinan, excepting only those nations (such as the Oceti Sakowin , Aztlan and Quebec ) with religious laws forbidding their operation. The boundaries of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod in specific extend from the Algonkian-Manitou Border to the North, the Red River Disputed Military Zone  to the West, South just beyond Alexandria, MN and East past Bemidji, MN. Fargo (pop. 532,683) in the RRDMZ, Moorhead (pop. 98,176) in Clay County, Fergus Falls (pop. 31,500) in Otter Tail County, Bemidji (pop. 40,293) in Beltrami County, and Alexandria (pop. 33,210) in Douglas County are the five largest communities in the synod. The synod encompasses a large part of Minnesota lakes area. Otter Tail County alone has over 1000 lakes.

The Synod includes the following 23 counties in the northwest corner of the state: Becker, Beltrami, Clay, Clearwater, Douglas, Grant, Hubbard, Kittson, Lake of the Woods, Mahnomen, Marshall, Norman, Otter Tail, Pennington, Polk, Red Lake, Roseau, Todd, Traverse, Wadena, Wilkin, White Earth and Leech Lake. In 2064 , the synod was expanded to the RRDMZ as well.

* **Institutions:** In the Red River Valley NWMN Synod is responsible for the operation of Concordia College in Moorhead MN, which includes its initiatory group, The Principia, as well as maintaining Last Lutheran Church in Fargo as its primary offices in the RRDMZ and serves as patron organization to the Pontoppidan Order, a Lutheran initiatory group operating within the Zone.
* **Partnerships:** Besides close relations with other ELCNA organizations, and even a tenuous alliance with the representatives of the stern Laestadian sect, the NWMN Synod maintains the century-old ELCNA commitment to ecumenism and as such works closely with other Christian organizations in the area, such as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fargo. Through Concordia College, the Synod connects to area educational institutions through the Tri-College system.

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