LCMS Districts Comparison
Data on the 35 LCMS Districts
I put together some data for comparison about the 35 Districts of the LCMS. Most of the data comes from our Synod’s website, except for the financial data. I had to gather that information from District websites. Sometimes it was very easy to find, other times quite difficult, and some I couldn’t find anything publicly available.1 So, the district data is for estimates only because the sources were from district websites, audited financial statements, convention workbooks, and annual reports, and each from different years. I tried to get the most recent data that I could find.
The totals in my chart are close (but don’t quite add up) to the totals available from the 2023 LCMS Annual Report. The goal was more for comparisons between the districts and the averages of the congregations than the exact data, because I have never come across such a comparison before. If you know of one, I would love to see it.
Click here to see the chart in a new window to see the data better.
Some of our districts are single states, many of them are combined regions, but a few states have multiple districts. Michigan and Texas has been the biggest districts recently, but I decided to combine Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois each into their own state district just to see how they compare. The data with those extra “districts” is available below separately because they would skew the totals and averages. Spoiler alert: they are bigger than Michigan and Texas in many cases!
If anyone has corrections or more up to date data, please let me know! Were there any surprises in the data for you?
Edit: Updated 2 districts’ finances that were miscalculated.
There were some Districts that reported a higher than average income because of one-time property sales; I tried to subtract that amount to get a number closer to their average.
thank you for putting this all together it is very interesting Betty Ann