In 1974, the LCMS was rent by the Seminex controversy, a walk-out by most of the students and faculty of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, that led to the establishment of a rival "Seminary in Exile". In 1975, presidents of eight LCMS districts were threatened with removal from office for allowing their congregations to ordain Seminex graduates who had not been certified by Concordia Seminary, and four were removed in April 1976. In the wake of the Seminex controversy and those removals, a movement to leave the LCMS took shape among dissident congregations and church officials, most of them members of ELIM. The largest number of departures came from the LCMS's non-geographical English District, which had been formed when English Synod had joined the LCMS in 1911. The departing English District leadership and congregations immediately reconstituted the pre-1911 English Synod, and a number of officials and congregations from other districts followed their lead by exiting the LCMS.