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Diplomat: Just out of curiosity, is “St. Pauls First Lutheran Church in North Hollywood" an ELCA congregation, LCMS, or other? If it's current congregation is mainly Hispanic, this could account for some of their feelings; if indeed this is the church.

brazzaville: FYI, The Lutheran church is made of of several denominations, called 'synods'; the most liberal being the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Other Denominations, such as Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS),Wisconsin Lutheran Synod (WLS), are considerably more conservative.

St. Paul’s First Lutheran in North Hollywood is WELS. During my growing up and attendance there, I can describe it as conservative. How far they’ve drifted left, if at all, I cannot say.

However, on their website, I can see that one of the pastors is named Lynn W. I’ll ask my mom the next time I see her if Lynn is a she. Pastor Pufahl is the young pastor I referred to in my prior email. I believe he and his wife had two very young children and one on the way 16 months ago. Saint Paul’s First Lutheran has been extremely lucky in the quality and capabilities of the pastors we’ve been assigned, recruited. All of the pastors and vicors I remember have been top-notch and above board people. I cannot recall any scandals involving any of them that I remember and Pufahl was wonderful during and after the services for my dad.

I do not believe that currently many of their congregation is hispanic. I could be way off on this though. I base this on my conversations with people who knew my father and to who I talked with a year ago at the funeral. It would be curious to know the break-down, only because the surrounding area is predominately hispanic. I know that they were/are trying to regrow the churh congregation and part of that effort would be to get more folks from the local community to attend.

The picture of the church on the website does not do justice to all the beautiful stained glass windows contained in the structure.

http://www.stpaulsfirst.org/

I did a tiny bit of internet research and discovered another Lutheran Church in North Hollywood named St. Matthews Lutheran Church; and they are ELCA.

Here is their link: http://www.stmatthewsnoho.org/

If I was a betting man, I’d say St. Matthews is the unnamed Lutheran church harboring an illegal alien for political purposes. I have no hard evidence to support this though.