Theodore Emanuel Schmauk was the president of the General Council from 1903 until the formation of the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA) in 1918.
[2] At the one hundred and nineteenth convention of the Pennsylvania Ministerium in 1866, a fraternal address was issued "to Evangelical Lutheran Synods, ministers and congregations in the United States and Canadas, which confess the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, inviting them to unite in a convention for the purpose of forming a union of Lutheran Synods."
This call urged "the needs of a general organization, first and supremely for the maintenance of unity in the true faith of the Gospel, and in the uncorrupted Sacraments, as the Word of God teaches and our Church confesses them; and furthermore for the preservation of her genuine spirit and worship, and for the development of her practical life in all her forms."
Although the Joint Synod of Ohio greatly desired to see a union of Lutheran church bodies, its members saw theological difficulties that would prevent them from joining the new General Council.
The Four Points became the most important factor in the development of the General Council, arresting in its very first convention the realization of the original plan of its founders, and in no small degree "damping the bright and perhaps somewhat sanguine expectations of its warmest friends", while they kept the body for years in constant agitation.
Thirteen Lutheran synods were present at the 1866 meeting in Reading, Pennsylvania, that authorized the organization of the General Council.