[1] 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.
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 AELC was a disappointment in some respects, since it garnered far fewer dissident LCMS congregations than its leaders had initially expected.
The AELC's leaders, Seminex president John Tietjen among them, served as the catalyst for merger talks with the American Lutheran Church (formed in 1960, with approximately 2.25 million members),[3] and the Lutheran Church in America (formed in 1962, with approximately 2.85 million members).