As the greater CLB family of North America comes together this year to mark the 125th anniversary of our founding as a synod and seek the Lord’s direction and guidance for the future, it is entirely fitting that we should choose this occasion to reprint The Quiet Hour, which stands as a literary testimonial—an Ebenezer stone—to God’s unbroken arc of faithfulness to us across the generations.

Though much has changed, in the ways that matter most for the kingdom of God, nothing has changed.

The Church of the Lutheran Brethren as a new spiritual movement within American Lutheranism formally came into existence 125 years ago in an obscure church basement on West Madison Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

After more than a century of uninterrupted LB mission work in Chad and Cameroon, and more than 70 years of mission work in mainland China, Japan, and Taiwan, there are now nearly twenty-five times as many Lutheran Brethren congregations and church members outside of North America as there are in the US and Canada. 

25 years ago, on December 17, 1900, five congregations gathered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and made the decision to form the Church of the Lutheran Brethren.