Our Beliefs

We are a congregation of Christians who interpret the Bible based on the example of the Reformers, whose efforts to return to the Bible as the central authority for Christian faith and practice led to the formation of the Protestant Church over 500 years ago. We are named after the most famous of those Reformers, Martin Luther, who insisted that saving faith is a gift from God made possible through the efforts of Jesus Christ. We believe that the rules for holy living, as laid out in the Bible, only become a spiritual blessing when we follow them motivated by love and gratitude, not by fear or force. Indeed, we have observed that this is what makes us distinct: Where everyone else asks the spiritual question, “How can I be the best person I can be?”, we ask the question, “How can I thank my Lord and my God for making me that good person I could never have been without Him?”!

There are several different organizations of Lutheran Christians, known as “Synods”. We are the descendants of Lutherans who believed that congregations are the places where God has chosen to be among His people as they gather around God’s Word and receive the blessings of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They concluded that the Church of Christ exists, then, not in some organizational structure led by men with special authority, but at the level of the Holy Spirit working among God’s people. Following the guidance of a man named Carl Ferdinand Walther, our ancestors established a system of Lutheran Congregationalism, and we continue to use that system today.   

Our congregations walk together in a free association with like-minded congregations who are committed to the idea that we are saved by faith alone by grace alone as a gift of God. Our interpretation of the Bible is guided by the principles laid down by the Lutheran Reformers and recorded in a collection of writings known as “The Lutheran Confessions”. Although we walk together with the Bible as our authority and Jesus Christ as the focus and the Confessions as our guide, we remain autonomous as a congregation. It is not our church body, but our congregation, that is ultimately accountable to God for how faithfully we preach God’s Word and reach out into the community with the Gospel. Our Synod is known today as Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC).