The first international workers were sent in 1904 by the World Mission Prayer League's predecessor agency, The American Board of the Santal Mission. They joined the Santal Mission work in India, sponsored by sister agencies in Norway and Denmark, which had been under way since 1867. By the mid-1930s, a band of students, pastors, and friends in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area joined together to approach the foreign mission boards of the existing Lutheran synods, but they found no budget for new outreach. In 1937, they organized themselves to accept missionary volunteers and send them into areas of special concern, without the constraint of budgetary limitations. They were committed to providing a way for lay participation in mission, without the requirement of ordination, and to complement the regular work of the Lutheran synods, without diverting means or personnel from their programs.
