To Appeal for Recognized Ecclesiastical Relationship with Luther Classical College

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7-25 
To Appeal for Recognized Ecclesiastical 
Relationship with Luther Classical College 
Preamble 
The classical Lutheran education movement in The Lutheran 
Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) began in the late 1990s with a 
few schools and the gathering of a small number of educators in 
what has become the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education 
(CCLE, a recognized service organization [RSO]). As the classical 
education movement gained momentum nationally, LCMS 
Lutherans sought to develop a uniquely Lutheran curriculum and 
educational philosophy, distinct from the many Reformed, Roman 
Catholic, Baptist, and  secular versions of the classical liberal arts. 
In the LCMS, Lutherans discovered that the Western Christian 
educational tradition had already been richly and thoroughly 
adapted by Lutheran leaders (e.g. Luther and Melanchthon) in the 
Lutheran Reformation and again in the United States of America at 
the beginning of the LCMS under C.F.W. Walther’s leadership. 
Current classical Lutheran educators have sought to build on this 
tradition. 
Today, this movement in the LCMS continues to grow rapidly 
among Lutheran schools and homeschools. In the LCMS this 
movement is supported by new classical offerings in our Concordia 
University System (CUS) schools, by the biennial “Lutheranism 
and the Clas sics” conference hosted by Concordia Theological 
Seminary and by the CCLE. Recent CCLE conferences have been 
attended by over 500 participants. The number of CCLE accredited 
schools surpassed 20 schools in 2024. Numerous homeschools 
throughout Synod have embraced the Western tradition of classical 
education. 
From the beginning, schools in the classical Lutheran education 
movement throughout the Synod have sought to find and recruit 
pastors, teachers, and headmasters who have received an education 
that combines a thorough knowledge of Scriptures and the 
Confessions of the Lutheran church with the skills and knowledge 
appropriate to the Western Christian liberal arts tradition. For the 
past quarter -century Lutheran schools and Lutheran parents have 
contemplated the need for a Lutheran classical college in which 
sound Christian doctrine, philosophy, history, literature, the 
classical languages, and the mathematical arts are thoroughly 
integrated and incorporated into the life of the home, church, and 
community. Classical Lutheran leaders who attempted to start such 
a college in the early years discovered that the time was not right. 
The right time has now come. 
In 2020, pastors, laymen, and congregations of the Wyoming 
District and across the LCMS organized a board of regents for the 
new Luther Classical College (LCC). In 2025, LCC held classes for 
its first cohort of students. 
The college has been hosted and sponsored in various ways by two 
district congregations in Casper, Wyo. (Mount Hope and Trinity 
Evangelical Lutheran Churches). Each congregation provides 
regents to the LCC Board of Regents (BOR), calls for rostered 
church workers, and has a role in the nomination of regents. 
The district president is a member of the BOR; he advises the LCC 
president, BOR, Mount Hope, and Trinity in the appointment and 
election of faculty; and he provides ecclesiastical oversight, 
encouragement, and counsel to LCC through its president and BOR. 
As of January 2025, LCC has been sponsored and funded by 
hundreds of supporting LCMS congregations nationwide and more 
than a thousand individual LCMS donors. LCMS families are 
sending their young men and women to LCC to receive a robust 
classical Lutheran education. All the faculty and staff are members 
of LCMS congregations. The pastors and commissioned teachers 
on the faculty and staff are members of the district and are under the 
ecclesiastical supervision and care of the district president. 
LCC is a congregational college, that is, a college organized by, 
supported by, and supporting the congregations of the LCMS. In its 
doctrinal commitments and Lutheran culture, it complements the 
Synod’s Concordia universities, but it is not a member or part of the 
CUS. LCC is not governed by the LCMS and has no legal or 
financial connection to the Synod. From the time of its organization, 
however, LCC has been seeking a formal ecclesiastical relationship 
with Synod. Its mission fully supports and advances the divinely 
instituted objectives of the LCMS. 
LCC is bound to the Holy Scriptures as the inerrant, inspired Word 
of God and to the Lutheran Confessions as a true exposition of Holy 
Scriptures and a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Lutheran 
church. LCC is guided by these commitments: 
Luther Classical College educates Lutherans in the classical, 
Lutheran tradition and prepares them for godly vocations within 
family, church, and society, fostering Christian culture through 
study of the best of our Western heritage. (LCC Mission 
Statement; lutherclassical.org/about/mission) 
The college will provide a conservative, classical Lutheran 
education to Lutheran students. Paramount will be the promotion of 
Christian culture, a stress on the priority of Christian marriage, 
family, and piety, and a cultivation of confessional Lutheran 
theology, liturgy, hymnody, and identity. With courses using the 
“great books” of the past for the core curriculum, the college will 
offer Latin, history, theology, literature, logic, rhetoric, music, 
geometry, biology, and mathematics, all within a purpos efully 
Christian and Lutheran framework. 
WHEREAS, Our LCC is a thoroughly Lutheran micro-college 
with joyful commitments to Holy Scriptures, the Lutheran 
Confessions, and the doctrine of the Synod; and 
WHEREAS, LCC fulfills the divine commandment to teach 
Lutheran young people the pure doctrine of Holy Scriptures and a 
pious Christian life in devotion and vocation (Matt. 28:19–20; Eph. 
6:1–4; Deut. 6:4–9; Psalm 78:1–8); and 
WHEREAS, LCC not only conforms to the confession of the 
Synod (Const. Art. II) but also advances the objectives of the LCMS 
to “aid congregations to develop processes of thorough Christian 
education and nurture and to establish agencies of Christian 
education such as elementary and secondary schools and to support 
synodical colleges, universities, and seminaries” (Const. Art. III 5); 
and 
W
HEREAS, LCC is sponsored by LCMS congregations, governed 
by LCMS regents, located in LCMS congregations of the Wyoming 
District, visited diligently by the district president for the 
maintenance of true ecclesiastical concord (Preface to The Book of 
Concord, 24), and serves the congregations of the LCMS by 
teaching her students and returning them for life and se rvice to the 
congregations of the Synod; therefore be it 
Resolved, That the district in convention petition the Synod 
President and Secretary to work with the Commission on 
2026 Convention Workbook
434 UNIVERSITY EDUCA TION