The National Evangelical Lutheran Church (NELC) was a Finnish-American Lutheran church body that was organized in 1898 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, as the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran National Church of America. It merged into the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) in 1965. History In 1898, a group of Finnish Lutherans, eight laymen and a pastor, organized the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran National Church of America in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Although its founding had occurred in Wyoming, many of the congregations were located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, especially around Calumet, as well as the Iron Range of northeastern Minnesota. The NELC was the smallest of three Finnish-American Lutheran churches in the United States. Several years earlier, in 1890, the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (known as the Suomi Synod) had been founded in Calumet. The group that formed the NELC had either left the Suomi Synod or had never joined it due to differences in doctrine and issues of congregational freedom and autonomy. The other Finnish-American body was the Apostolic Lutheran Church of America, founded in 1872, also in Calumet, as the Solomon Korteniemi Lutheran Society. Within a few years of founding, the NELC became connected with the Gospel Association of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, and became known as the Synod of Finnish "Evangelicals" because they stressed the forgiveness of sins, certainty of salvation, Baptismal regeneration, and the right of sinners to accept forgiveness without undertaking specific preparations beforehand other than having a "feeling" of sin. A college for training pastors and teaching English to Finnish immigrants was started in Duluth, Minnesota, soon after 1900. However, because it was organized as an open shareholders association, atheistic socialists were able to gain control and closed the seminary in 1905 before a single pastor had graduated, and converted the school into a workers college. From 1905 to 1918, the synod's pastors received no academic training other than getting preaching instruction from the Gospel Association. Due to financial issues soon after 1900, the NELC sought a possible merger with the Suomi Synod. Because that synod would not accept the lay-trained pastors of the NELC, the latter opened a new seminary in Ironwood, Michigan, in 1918. However, that seminary was closed in 1923 when one teacher left to go to Japan and another returned to Finland. Overtures to the Suomi Synod subsequently ceased, and the NELC instead established fellowship with the Lutheran Church–Missouri