What is the history of deaconesses in the LCMS?
While deaconesses have served in the Lutheran Church since the 1830’s, it wasn’t until 1922 that the first deaconess began to serve in the Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod. In 1919, the Lutheran Deaconess Association (a pan-Lutheran organization) was formed and began training deaconesses for the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, which at that time included the Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Norwegian Lutheran synods. Between 1919 and 1935 all deaconess trained to be nurses, and their training took place at hospitals or institutions in Fort Wayne, IN; Beaver Dam, WI; Hot Springs, SD; or Watertown, WI. In 1935, the deaconess training centers were consolidated into one school in Fort Wayne, which moved to Valparaiso, IN, in 1943. In 1980, The LCMS opened its first synodical deaconess training program at Concordia University Chicago (River Forest), and the Concordia Deaconess Conference (a free association of confessional LCMS deaconesses) was fo
