The Gutnius Lutheran Church, formerly the Wabag Lutheran Church, is a Lutheran body existing in Papua New Guinea. Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the teachings of the sixteenth-century German reformer Martin Luther Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania It was established by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod in 1948 shortly after the Australian administration of the Territory of Papua and New Guinea permitted missionary activity to spread into the western highlands. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS founded in 1847 in Missouri, is the eighth largest Protestant denomination in the United States and the second-largest Year 1948 ( MCMXLVIII) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The church counts 138,000 parishioners, largely confined to Enga Province in the western highlands. Enga refers to both an ethnic group located in the highlands of Papua New Guinea and the province in which they are the majority ethnic group It operates the Immanuel Lutheran Hospital and the St. Paul's Lutheran Secondary School (Pausa) at Wapenamanda, Enga Province. The Church has other Health and Educational institutions as well.
It has suffered some attrition in numbers as fundamentalist and charismatic sects based in the United States of America have conducted aggressive proselytising activities among its constituents in the Enga. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the
In recent decades the church has increasingly established ties with the longer-established, theologically more liberal and liturgically more conservative Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea has a membership of 1001005 (census of year 2000 It co-operates with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in conducting clergy education and, with that Lutheran denomination and the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea, in operating the Balob Teachers College in Lae. The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea came into existence as a discrete province of the Anglican Communion when the Anglican Province of Papua New Guinea