Walvoja, which carried news. In return, the Heideman group began to publish a religious monthly, too, in 1922, the Rauhan Tervehdys. And so the two factions went on their separate ways until 1928, when a turning point was reached in the Laestadian movement: that year saw both the death of Heideman and the founding of the Apostolic Lutheran Church.

This new church managed to take but very few local congregations into binding union, for the local groups still were allowed to choose their own pastors, invite whom they chose to preach to them as long as these preachers stayed within the `broad concepts' of the Apostolic Lutheran faith. However, this church did bring about the biggest Laestadian grouping, and in 1947 it had 18 ordained ministers and 23 lay preachers. Johan Oberg became the first head of the church, and he was succeeded in 1942 by Andrew Mickelsen. A strong Sunday School program was begun, and teachers were trained at annual assembly sessions. In addition, a publishing program was begun, bringing out as its first major work a new hymnal. Publication of the Kristillinen Kuukausilehti was continued (Evert Määttälä, Jacob Uitti and W. A. Karvonen have been its editors) and in 1944 the Englishlanguage Christian Monthly was introduced, with Karvonen as editor. Meanwhile, the Heideman faction had begun in 1931 the Opas, as competition to the Walvoja (which had John G. Tuira, E. A. Miller and Reino Suojanen as editors) and both papers were edited from headquarters on the same street in Calumet. It was in 1957 that the Opas and the Walvoja were finally merged, into the Northland Publishing Company, which then started publication of the Pohjolan Sanomat.

Throughout these decades, the Heideman movement has constituted the second largest Apostolic Lutheran grouping, which has also stressed the importance of Sunday schools and which has had as its organ the Rauhan Tervehdys, continuing publication in an English-language version in 1934 under the title, Greetings o f Peace. Actually, this movement has had but one ordained minister, but in 1947 it still had 17 lay preachers.

The third largest Apostolic Lutheran group has been that of the former Heideman followers, who parted company in 1921, being called the "Evangelists" or the Pollari followers, and who have been significant in Minnesota particularly. In 1940 this group once more split in two, with the original group counting among its leaders not only Pollari but also Walter Isaacs, Sam Kovala and Matti Reed, while the off-shoot group has included

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