The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is the major Canadian representative of the traditions of the Lutheran reformation of the catholic Christian church. Baptized membership was 193,915 members on December 31, 1998. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada came into being in 1986 through the merger of two predecessor bodies. We derive our teachings from the Holy Scriptures and confess the three ecumenical creeds of the Christian church. We hold to orthodox catholic theology as enunciated in the ecumenical councils of the first five centuries of Christianity. We trace our roots as a confessing movement to the reformation of the catholic church initiated by Dr. Martin Luther in Germany in the 1500s. See Project Wittenberg for a great deal of primary source information. From Germany, Lutheranism spread to Scandinavia and the Baltic states, as well as to other areas in central and eastern Europe.
Today, Lutherans are to be found around the world. Lutherans have been continually present in Canada since the 1750s, when German Lutheran immigrants arrived in Halifax.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada holds membership in the Lutheran World Federation, the Canadian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is in full communion with the Anglican Church of Canada. See the joint Waterloo Declaration for details.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada is composed of
five synods. From west to east, they are the 
British Columbia Synod, the 
Synod of Alberta and the Territories,
the 
Saskatchewan
Synod, the 
Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod, and the 
Eastern Synod. The presiding officer
and chief pastor of each synod is a bishop.
Pastor Kenn Ward [e-mail], editor of the ELCIC's national magazine, Canada Lutheran, has written a helpful ELCIC Primer. The Primer can serve as a brief introduction to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Over the 1995-1997 biennium, a Future Directions Task Force on Mission was created to provide for extensive participation by the whole church in a process of prayer, consultation, exploration, discussion and discernment around issues related to the mission of the church. At the ELCIC's National Convention of July, 1997, the assembly embraced the Task Force's Evangelical Declaration "as our church's vision for life and mission for the next decade (1997-2007), and as a source and guide for goals, objectives and strategies to propel us into the next millennium." The Evangelical Declaration can serve to introduce the ELCIC's current self-understanding as to its mission.
This page reproduced of the ELCIC Website.