The Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) was a U.S. church body that existed from 1976 through the end of 1987. The AELC formed when approximately 250 dissident congregations withdrew from the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) in 1976, and ended as an independent body when it became part of the new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) on January 1, 1988. In 1986, just before its merger into the ELCA, the AELC had 672 pastors, 250 congregations, and 103,263 members. Formation The AELC's forerunner was Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), a liberal caucus within the LCMS that opposed that body's more conservative turn in the early and mid-1970s. ELIM was formed when, in the wake of conservative victories at the 1973 convention of the LCMS, more liberal opponents had convened a conference in Chicago to chart out strategies. The conference's 800 delegates promised moral and financial support for church members who faced pressure due to their opposition to LCMS convention actions, and established ELIM as a network and rallying point for the moderate wing of the LCMS. In 1974, the LCMS was rent by the Seminex controversy, a walk-out by most of the students and faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, that led to the establishment of a rival "Seminary in Exile". In 1975, presidents of eight LCMS districts were threatened with removal from office for allowing their congregations to ordain Seminex graduates who had not been certified by Concordia Seminary, and four were removed in April 1976. In the wake of the Seminex controversy and those removals, a movement to leave the LCMS took shape among dissident congregations and church officials, most of them members of ELIM. The largest number of departures came from the LCMS's non-geographical English District, which had been formed when English Synod had joined the LCMS in 1911. The departing English District leadership and congregations immediately reconstituted the pre-1911 English Synod, and a number of officials and congregations from other districts followed their lead by exiting the LCMS. In the end, approximately 250 congregations left the LCMS. In December 1976, these congregations established the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). The AELC was a disappointment in some respects, since it garnered far fewer dissident LCMS congregations than its leaders had initially expected. With congregations totaling about 100,000 members, the AELC included less than 4% of the 2.7 million members of LCMS. In October