Zion Lutheran Church is a Christian congregation that teaches the gospel of the forgiveness of sins through Christ Jesus in Ellendale, North Dakota. We are congregation in the North Dakota District of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

We believe that the only true God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons in one divine essence, as the Scriptures teach Him, and as the Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds faithfully confess Him; 

We believe, teach, and confess that God has caused His word to be recorded in the Old and New Testament Scriptures by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We therefore believe that the Bible is without errors and can be fully trusted. The Bible is the only source and norm of Christian teaching;

We believe that by His almighty Word God created a perfect world in six days but that this perfect world was ruined by Adam and Eve's rebellion against their Creator; their sin has corrupted all humanity so that all people are now conceived and born dead in sin; therefore we believe that all people are sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God.  By nature all people lack true fear, love, and trust in God that we were created with.  We cannot by our own understanding or willpower or works come to or trust in Him.  Sin severs us from God until our sin is taken away.  Until we come to know God in Christ we will only finally trust in ourselves and in gods of our own making;


We believe, teach, and confess that God loved the world and sent His only begotten Son to become man and to take our place beneath the judgment God rightly has against our sin.  He became our substitute, obeying God’s Law on our behalf, and suffering the punishment the Law justly threatens sinners with.  Jesus is the eternal Son of God and so it true God.  Jesus was born in time of the Virgin Mary without sin.  We believe is our Lord because He has shown himself Lord over our sin by shedding his blood, over death by rising from the grave, and over the devil taking away his power to accuse our consciences.  Whoever believes in Him has eternal life and will not enter into judgment.

We believe that God freely distributes His forgiveness and is present today among His people through the "means of grace" (the Word and Sacraments) and that God's Church is found wherever these means of grace are used;

We believe that here is only once Church that will live forever.  The Church is the congregation or communion of saints or lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd in the Gospel and sacraments (“means of grace”).  The Church is united by the pure teaching of the Gospel and the right use of the sacraments. This one Church is hidden from our eyes on this earth, but we find it by hearing the Gospel and receiving the sacraments.

We believe that the Preaching of the Gospel is one of these “means of grace” through which God creates, strengthens, and sustains faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 10:17);

We believe “Baptism does also now save you.”  “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.”  “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”  On account of what Scripture teaches about baptism, we believe that baptism saves us, not because it is a work that we do, but because the Word of God with the water brings us the forgiveness Christ earned for us on the cross. Without faith baptism does not save – “Whoever does not believe will be that Baptism is another "means of grace" through which God, by water combined with His almighty Word, calls people (including infants and little children) into His Church or family, giving them the new birth of faith, and forgiving them all their sins;

We believe that the Lord's Supper is another "means of grace" in which our risen Savior gives all communicants His true body to eat and His true blood to drink hidden in, with, and under bread and wine for the forgiveness of all their sins(Matt. 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22:19,20; I Cor. 11:23-25);

We believe that the Absolution is another “means of grace” by which we hear the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins from the pastor who speaks this word “in the stead and by the command” of Jesus Christ (John 20:22,23);

We believe that the Holy Spirit no longer speaks directly to people as He did to the prophets and apostles in the Bible but works in us today only through the Ministry of Word and Sacraments;

We believe that, through congregations like ours, God calls qualified men into the public Ministry of Word and Sacrament to represent Him and to speak His Word in His Church;

We believe that as the branches are attached to the vine and bear fruit, so too we Christians who are attached by faith to Christ bear the fruit of good works toward one another in the vocations to which God has called us;

We believe that Christ’s Church is to extend God’s mercy to the poor and weak and defenseless, showing love to our neighbors;

We believe that our risen and ascended Savior Jesus Christ will visibly return on the last day as He has promised in order to assign all unbelievers to eternal punishment in hell but to take all true believers to live with Himself in heaven forever;

We believe that all of the teachings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, as we have learned them from Luther’s Small Catechism and as they are thoroughly explained in the Book of Concord of 1580, are a correct exposition of the Word of God and continue to reflect our faith today. We hold to the Lutheran Confessions as we hold to the three ecumenical creeds, the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.  They faithfully present what God teaches in the Bible.

We believe that the historic and traditional liturgies and hymns of the Lutheran Church ought to be practiced and encouraged so that we would have harmony and uniformity among God’s people, as God teaches in Romans 15:5-6