The Lutheran Churches of the Reformation (LCR) is an association of Lutheran congregations. The LCR has its roots among groups of Lutherans that broke with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) in the middle of the 20th century, and was formally incorporated in 1964. Church services are generally traditional and reverent in the style of the mid-1900s conservative Christians. History In 1951, the Orthodox Lutheran Conference (OLC) was formed by pastors and congregations of the LCMS who were critical of the theological changes occurring in that body. The OLC itself split in 1956 when Paul E. Kretzmann, a professor in the OLC's seminary, suspended church fellowship with some congregations after they charged him with teaching error in class. Those congregations formed the Concordia Lutheran Conference, while most of the others, along with Kretzmann, later joined with other conservatives leaving the LCMS to organize as the LCR. After the 1959 convention of the LCMS, conservative members of the synod began holding State of the Synod Conferences to discuss the problems they saw. Kretzmann, Wallace McLaughlin, and Harold Romoser, who all had been involved in the formation of the OLC, were also involved in these conferences. At the first conference, a 200-page book of documentation prepared by pastor Herman Otten of Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven, Missouri, was presented. It listed every controversy within the LCMS since 1950, with sections on Martin Scharlemann, Jaroslav Pelikan, Martin Marty, the Common Confession, and Biblical authority and inspiration. The conference on May 15–16, 1961, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was attended by over 400 laymen and pastors who hoped to make progress on their concerns at the synod's upcoming convention in 1962. However, the State of the Synod Conference was not permitted to have a booth at the convention and the issues of concern were not addressed. As a result, St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Detroit, Michigan, whose pastor, Cameron A. MacKenzie Sr., was a leader in the conferences, left the synod. In early 1964, a group of pastors and laymen meeting at Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven, Missouri, agreed that the time had come to form a new church body. The LCR was officially formed on April 28–29, 1964, at Emmaus Lutheran Church in Chicago. Notably, neither Otten nor Trinity Lutheran joined the new body. MacKenzie was elected as the first administrator and Romoser as the first coadjutor. By 1965, the LCR had seven member