 The Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC) includes the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS).The national church bodies serve their member congregations and other entities with colleges and seminaries for their professional church workers and missionaries, resources for starting new missions, ecclesiastical supervision, and liturgical and educational materials produced by their official publishing houses such as Augsburg-Fortress Press (ELCA), Concordia Publishing House (LCMS), and Northwestern Publishing House (WELS).There are at least 20 smaller Lutheran denominations in North America, with some of them being doctrinal offshoots of larger groups through the years, or groups that never merged.