Today’s post will discuss the Walther League’s founding and some of the challenges of its early years. If you’re not interested in the history, you can skip to part IV, which looks at some of the lessons that can be gleaned from it.

I.

One Sunday in 1875, Pastor Carl Gross of First Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Buffalo, NY, asked the young men of his congregation to stay after the service to discuss creating a new young men’s association. Only eight members stayed, but Gross decided to press ahead anyway, scheduling a meeting for the following Sunday. The eighteen men who attended the first meeting wasted no time, appointing a chairman and secretary at their first meeting, adopting a constitution at their second meeting the following week, and electing a full slate of officers a week later. Within a month, the society purchased furniture, established a lending library, sponsored a debate, and grew to twenty-six members between the ages of 16 and 30.

Shortly thereafter, a similar young women’s society was organized, consisting of both single and married women. The ladies’ and men’s societies quickly began doing so many activities together that they became functionally one organization.

II.

In 1882, several members of Trinity’s Lutheran Young Men’s Association proposed creating a national association of Lutheran young people’s societies. A committee sent letters to a select group of pastors from across the country, soliciting their opinions on the matter. Fifteen pastors responded positively, but only three agreed with the Buffalo group’s organizational scheme. The other twelve pastors proposed twelve unique plans of union. In response to this great diversity of opinions, the young men from Trinity decided to let the matter drop.

A second attempt was made in 1888, but nothing came of it. Finally, in 1890, the Young Men’s Association decided to try again, this time starting close to home and without involving the clergy. In 1892, they joined the young men from St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, also in Buffalo, to create Der General Verband der Lutherischen Jünglings Vereine der Synodal-Conferenz (The General Association of Lutheran Young People’s Societies of the Synodical Conference). It was an ambitious (and unwieldy) name that clearly showed the ambitious intentions of its founders.

A monthly newspaper—Der Vereinsbote—was started in June. Its inaugural issue included an appeal from August Senne, the new pastor of Trinity, to create a truly national association:

One of our societies has the goal to build and enlarge God’s kingdom as much as possible, to strive to support academic vocations, and to cultivate entertainment and edification in Christian spirit and mind. . . . But how much better could these goals be reached, and how much more good could be accomplished . . . if the individual societies would band together?

[Through a national association] our young Christians in different parts of the land would . . . be pushed closer together; they would acquaint and befriend themselves with one another. If a member of one of our societies would move to a strange city, which happens so often today, and there existed in this city a society from our association, then this member would have friends to whom he could turn and who would help him.

Pahl, Hopes and Dreams of All, 17–18.

A national convention was announced for May 20–23, 1893. Trinity members prepared agendas, arranged for evening entertainment, and organized a trip to Niagara Falls. Four major points were raised for discussion.

1. The most important goal . . . is to keep our dear youth in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. . . .
2. The second reason for combining individual societies is that our young Christians in the various parts of the country would be pulled closer together.
3. The Central Association could have a yearly meeting, at which the state of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Young Men’s Society could be discussed. . . .
4. The support of a common paper . . . should be discussed.

Pahl, 19.

Sixteen delegates from twelve societies attended the first convention of the new Generalverband der lutherischen Jugend- und Jungmännervereine der Synodalkonferenz (General Association of Lutheran Youth and Young Men’s Societies of the Synodical Conference), representing 693 young people from Buffalo, New York City, Brooklyn, and Rochester, NY; Milwaukee; Fort Wayne; Dallas; Detroit; and Danbury, CT. At the second convention held in Fort Wayne the following year, the delegates chose a shorter name: Die Walther Liga—The Walther League.

III.

Growth of the new league was slow, hampered by uninterest from other congregations and outright opposition from synodical leadership. Another issue was the existence of competing leagues.

In 1902, several San Francisco-area young people’s societies organized the “Buehler Bund,” named after Pastor Jacob Buehler, “the Father of Lutheranism on the Pacific Coast.” On the east coast, the young people’s societies from ten New England cities organized the “Missouri Luther League” in 1904. In Rochester and New York City, a “Lutheran Young People’s Society of Greater New York” sprang up. In Buffalo, several societies started their own Bund in opposition to the Walther League.

Several attempts were made to merge these societies, initially to no avail. Language was one obstacle—the Walther League was committed to the use of German, while the New York association did its work in English. Distance was another—the Buehler Bund was initially uninterested in joining the Walther League due to the distance between the Bay Area and the cities in which the Walther League operated.

Another obstacle was organization. The Walther League constitution required each chapter to be affiliated with and under the control of a local congregation. Some cities had unified, multicongregational societies already before the Walther League was organized. These were not allowed to join the new league without disbanding and reorganizing according to the Walther League plan, which they were unsurprisingly loathe to do. This rigid adherence to a set form of organization, while understandable given the circumstances of the day, hampered the league’s early growth.

A similar situation arose in the early years of the Lutheran Layman’s League. In Cleveland and Fort Wayne, unified city leagues were organized, violating the bylaws of the LLL, which required that each chapter be affiliated with a single congregation. In Cleveland, after being warned off by synodical officials in St. Louis, the unified society disbanded, setting back LLL work in that city immensely. In Fort Wayne, the laity responded to such synodical warnings by forming their own national league and banning all pastors and teachers from joining. Within two years, the new Fort Wayne-based American Luther League grew to 32,000 members nationwide.

This split was certainly more dramatic than those faced by the Walther League in its early years, but the precipitating cause—rigid adherence to a prescribed language, structure, or constitution—was the same.

IV.

So what lessons can we learn for today?

First, don’t delay. Pastor Gross showed the way here, proposing a young men’s society in his church one week, calling the first meeting the next week, and having organizational meetings each of the two weeks after that. In less than a month, he completed his goal. Now, starting something on a state or national level will obviously take more time, but it is still important to keep things moving along.

Secondly, growth will likely be slow. It took the Walther League 30 years to reach 10,000 members nation-wide, and that at a time when people were very gung-ho about joining leagues, societies, associations, etc. Even at the congregational level, expect to be disappointed by interest and turnout. Most people are not ambitious first-movers. Most people just go with the flow. But the positive side of that is that once you get something going, and it’s proven to be successful, you might very well reach a tipping point where suddenly legions of people will want to join. The Walther League’s growth from 1908 to the 1920s demonstrates that well. During those 15+ years, the league consistently grew by 20–30% annually, after an initial 15 years of fairly slow growth.

Thirdly, flexibility is important. The Walther League’s very formation was delayed by ten years partly due to competing ideas about organization. Even after it was founded, the league turned away several groups who wanted to join because they had mutually exclusive organizational schemes. The Lutheran Laymen’s League experienced similar issues two decades later. An organization’s structure is obviously important, but it should not take precedence over its actual mission.

Fourthly, perseverance is vital. It took ten years just to create the Walther League after the idea was first proposed. If its proponents had given up, the great blessings that the league later provided to the church would never have come about. Later, in 1909, the league nearly disbanded due to a combination of “no money, many opponents, and few friends.” Instead of disbanding, the league voted to embark on an aggressive promotion campaign, leading directly to the rapid growth mentioned above. Today, new leaguers can probably likewise expect slow growth, opposition from within the church, strange looks from outside the church, and sporadic set-backs and struggles. When that happens, the best approach is to shrug your shoulders, mutter c’est la vie, and plow ahead anyway.

Finally, be ambitious. The young men’s societies from two congregations in the same city got together and decided to create a “General Association of Lutheran Young People’s Societies of the Synodical Conference.” They didn’t create a league for the city, or the state, or even just a single synod. They tried to create something for all confessional Lutherans in the United States. Eventually, they succeeded. So today, let’s not try to create something for a specific congregation or city or state, but something for the entire country (and while we’re being ambitious, why not consider a league for the entire International Lutheran Council or at least the LCMS and its many partner churches? The Europeans even have a pre-existing group we could work with).