Faith Lutheran Church has stood in Inglewood's Morningside Park neighborhood since the early 1950s and traces its roots back to 1925, when a small group of Lutherans gathered on what was then a dusty Manchester cow path. The congregation meets at 3320 West 85th Street, where Sunday services run from 9:00 AM to noon and a Wednesday Bible study fills the late morning hour. The church belongs to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and is led today by Reverend Anthony K. Foster, who was ordained in 2019 after thirty-one years as an engineering technician at The Boeing Company.
Visitors arriving on a Sunday morning are greeted with the words, "Blessed Sunday to all our Faith Family & Friends," and an open invitation to worship in person or to follow online through the church's YouTube channel. The service runs from 9:00 AM until 12:00 PM, and the church welcomes all comers with a simple "All are welcome." For those who want to dig deeper into Scripture, a Bible study is held every Wednesday at 11:00 AM, and the invitation is just as direct: "Let's contemplate and learn together!"
Pastor Anthony K. Foster
Reverend Anthony K. Foster wears two hats. He is pastor of Faith Lutheran Church and director of Faith Lutheran Community Development, LLC. Before entering ministry he spent thirty-one years as a senior satellite test and fabrication engineering technician at The Boeing Company, retiring in 2017. He earned an A.A. in Computer Maintenance from Los Angeles Trade-Technical in 1985 and a B.S. in Business Management from the University of Phoenix in 2011. Within the congregation he served as president from 2009 to 2013 and as deacon from 2015 to 2019, and he was ordained as pastor on June 22, 2019. His stated mission is to "promote the Christian Spirit" through love, kindness, fairness, equality, justice, and patience, qualities he says he strives for along with everyone else, "as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ did."
From a 1925 Cow Path to the Morningside Park Sanctuary
The story of Faith Lutheran begins in August 1925, when a handful of local members and dignitaries from what was then the California-Nevada District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod gathered in an upstairs hall at Manchester Avenue and South Broadway to ordain and install the Reverend Carl Walter Berner, freshly graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. The first meeting place was "an old ramshackle wooden structure on the corner of Manchester and South Broadway." Two years later the growing group moved to South Broadway and 95th Street and dedicated a larger sanctuary in 1927.
Even before 1950 the members knew that a planned freeway would make the Broadway property untenable. After much prayer, the congregation "leaped over the freeway into the Morningside Park area," founding what was originally known as Faith Morningside Lutheran Church. The present site at 3320 West 85th Street was dedicated in 1952, and the new sanctuary - the heart of today's campus - was dedicated on Pentecost Sunday, May 25, 1958. By the time of the dedication booklet, the congregation numbered nearly 1,900 baptized members.
Two signature initiatives came out of those mid-century years. The first was the Sealed Pledge plan, a voluntary percentage-return giving model that allowed the congregation to build the new church without traditional fundraising campaigns, with the debt scheduled to be retired within eight to ten years. The second was the Covenant Home plan, which called families to daily use of God's Word and prayer; member families displayed a wall card identifying them as a Covenant Home. Both ideas, the dedication booklet records, "gained nationwide attention" within the LCMS.
What Lutherans Believe
Faith Lutheran belongs to the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and teaches the historic Lutheran confessions in the terms the LCMS uses. The church holds that the Bible is the written Word of God, completely reliable and without error, and that everything Lutherans believe comes from it. There is one true God, existing in three equal persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father is the creator; the Son is Jesus Christ, who became the perfect "go-between" between God and humanity; the Holy Spirit brings people to faith and keeps them in it.
All people are born sinful, separated from God, and unable to save themselves. God sent His Son to live the perfect life humanity cannot live and to die on the cross as a substitute. Salvation is by grace, through faith, as Ephesians 2:8-9 puts it: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." Good works follow faith as a thank-offering, not as a means of earning it. Lutherans speak of three "means of grace" through which God delivers forgiveness: God's Word, holy Baptism, and the Lord's Supper (Holy Communion). On the Last Day, Jesus Christ will return to raise the dead and judge the world; those who believe will have eternal life, and those who do not will face eternal damnation.
The Sanctuary, the Organ, and the Stained Glass
The 1958 sanctuary was built to set the historic Christian liturgy. A marble altar sits at the center, with a 350-pound cast brass cross and crown above it; light reaches the crown through fourteen inches of masonry by way of lucite rods so that it "sparkles like gems." The reflected colors fall onto a marble predella behind the altar. The Baptistry - or Chapel of the Font - has a shaft of light falling onto the baptismal font, with a small organ nearby for baptisms, weddings, and smaller gatherings.
Two choir locations invite the antiphonal singing honored in Lutheran tradition: a gallery choir loft and a chancel-side choir. The organ was built by Casavant Freres Limited of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, a builder of great instruments since 1837. It contains twenty-nine independent ranks, 1,596 pipes, and a set of twenty-five chimes, with its tone divided into four families - diapason, flute, strings, and reeds. A low-intensity sound-amplification system was originally included to help the assembled congregation follow the parts of the divine service.
The stained glass comes from the Roger Darricarrere studios and uses an old French technique: pure color, with no brush marks for design, chipped toward the inside and often three inches thick to give depth and rich shading. The six clerestory windows trace the central events of the Christian story - the Nativity, Christ in the Temple at twelve, Christ as Teacher, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The chancel Trinity window gives a soft glow of warm colors over the altar. The lower aisle windows portray parables of the Lord, and the cross-shaped windows carry symbols related to the themes of the larger windows nearby - phoenix, butterfly, dove, cock, and dolphin among the many. A piece of glass from the Castle Church in Wittenberg, where Martin Luther preached, has been incorporated into the gallery window. The congregation is now developing a Christus Rex window for the front entrance, planned to portray the victorious Christ of Revelation chapter one.
Adjacent buildings include a daily library and reading room, a sacristy for sacramental vessels and vestments, a choir room, and rooms for high school and college youth groups. A mother and children's room is equipped with play pens and beds, and a closed TV circuit brings the divine service into the room so mothers can take part in every part of the service while caring for their children. The sanctuary is open daily for private worship, with an electric eye activating a recorded service of a hymn, a prayer, and a message prepared by one of the pastors.
Wednesday Bible Study and the Life of the Congregation
Midweek learning has been a steady rhythm. Bible study meets every Wednesday from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and the calendar shows no break in the schedule week after week. The session is described simply: "Let's contemplate and learn together!" The church also publishes a regular newsletter that carries the same steady rhythm over the years - April-May, July-August, February-March - recording the life of the congregation.
Giving is available online through a secure portal. The church maintains a presence on Facebook and livestreams services on YouTube, so members and friends who cannot attend in person can still join the 9:00 AM worship. A prayer request form invites anyone to submit a request, with the encouragement that "Prayer is a powerful tool God has given us and we encourage everyone to develop an active prayer life. Your church family is here for you."
Faith Lutheran Community Development
Pastor Foster's other role is as director of Faith Lutheran Community Development, LLC, a sister effort of the congregation with two main projects. The first is senior housing for the community; the second is an early childhood development program, a pre-school intended to "get a head start in bringing back the interaction between our youth and our seniors." In Pastor Foster's words, "There is a void presently of encouragement and wisdom being imparted to our youth and a sense of pride being lost among our seniors." The development corporation is the congregation's main instrument for addressing that gap and reaching out to the surrounding Morningside Park community.
Forty-Five Years: In Memory of Pastor Dietrich Norman Schleef
Faith Lutheran carries the legacy of Pastor Dietrich Norman Schleef, who served the congregation from 1975 until his retirement. Born on October 24, 1941, in Watseka, Illinois, Schleef earned a bachelor's degree in science from Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois, and then served as a Commissioned Ministry of Religion at St. Stephen Lutheran Church in Horicon, Wisconsin, and as a teacher in Milwaukee. In 1968 he came to the Pacific Southwest District of the LCMS as a teacher and director of urban ministry at Grace Lutheran Church in Los Angeles, then entered Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, graduating in 1971. He was installed as pastor of Faith Lutheran Church of Morningside Park (Inglewood) in 1975 and served for forty-five years. Within the PSD he served as a circuit counselor and was a delegate to three Synod conventions. His community service included the Board of Directors of Lutheran High School, the chairmanship of the board for the Los Angeles Nehemiah Project, the chairmanship of the board for Pacific Lutheran Urban School, and various outreach programs. He died peacefully at home on April 29, 2024, with his wife and children beside him.
Worship with Faith Lutheran
Faith Lutheran Church is located at 3320 West 85th Street, Inglewood, California. The Find Us listing also references 8517 11th Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90305, on the same campus where the city's street grids meet. The church office can be reached at 323.750.3552. Sunday worship runs from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM, with the same hours in person and online; Wednesday Bible study begins at 11:00 AM. The church's mission statement gathers it up: may every person have the opportunity to hear the Gospel in an understandable and meaningful way, may every believer find ways to apply their faith as a lifestyle and make a difference in the world, and may everyone find a place to belong to a faithful Christian community where they can grow, feel safe, and build their faith.