On March 25, 1890, nine Lutheran congregations representing 1200 Finnish immigrants assembled at Trinity Lutheran Church in Calumet and organized the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church In America-Suomi Synod. Four pastors and seventeen laymen from congregations in Calumet, Hancock, Jacobsville, Republic, Ishpeming, Negaunee, and Ironwood, Michigan, as well as Savo, South Dakota, chose the Reverend Juho K. Nikander as the synod's first president. By the 1920s the synod had become a national church body with 153 congregations and 36,000 members. In 1963 it merged with Lutheran churches of Swedish, German, and Danish descent to form the Lutheran Church In America. The Calumet congregation, Faith Lutheran Church, continued the Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian group that met in Trinity Lutheran in 1890.