The headquartered denominations

Missionary Church 1969 — Fellowship of Evangelical Churches 2003 — the AALC 2007–2022

The claim, verified: Fort Wayne is often said to host the national headquarters of several denominations. The claim as usually printed — in Wikipedia's Fort Wayne article of December 2012 — lists four: the American Association of Lutheran Churches, the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association, the Missionary Church, and the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches. Verified one by one today, the list holds at three, and one of the three is documented only by that listing.

The Missionary Church: The Missionary Church Association was founded in 1898 at Berne, Indiana, a product of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ revival world, and kept its headquarters in Fort Wayne. In 1969 it merged with the United Missionary Church — the merger convention met in Detroit — to form the Missionary Church, an evangelical denomination whose national office remains in Fort Wayne, on Vanguard Drive, serving some 492 United States congregations as of 2025. Pathway Community Church, above, is a member congregation — Fort Wayne's largest church answering to a Fort Wayne headquarters.

The Fellowship of Evangelical Churches: The FEC's line runs from Bishop Henry Egly's 1866 awakening among the Amish of Adams County, through the "Egly Amish" and the Defenseless Mennonite Church (the name adopted in 1898), to the Evangelical Mennonite Church (1948) and the denomination's present name, Fellowship of Evangelical Churches, adopted 2 August 2003. Its headquarters is in Fort Wayne, at 6535 Maplecrest Road. Its Fort Wayne scholar-pastor Paul Erdel, who served forty-two years in Ecuador, wrote the denomination's history in the Missionary Church story's mirror image: the EMC's missionary movement split in the 1960s, and one stream of it flows into the Missionary Church above.

The departed and the unverified: The American Association of Lutheran Churches, formed 7 November 1987, moved its theological seminary to Fort Wayne in the fall of 2005 — hosted on the campus of Concordia Theological Seminary — and its national office followed from Bloomington, Minnesota, in 2007. It left again for St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2022: the fourth headquarters was Fort Wayne's for fifteen years, not permanently. The Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association, a fellowship of Black Baptist churches, is listed with a Fort Wayne headquarters in the 2012 article and in denominational directories, but no Fort Wayne address or office could be confirmed from the association's own publications; it stands as reported, unverified.

Sources:

1. "Fort Wayne, Indiana," Wikipedia, religion section (as of December 2012) — the four-headquarters list this entry verifies.
2. "Missionary Church," Wikipedia, and Missionary Church, Inc., denominational office records — the 1898 Berne founding, Fort Wayne headquarters, the 1969 merger, the 492 congregations (2025).
3. "Fellowship of Evangelical Churches," Wikipedia — the Egly line, the 1948 and 2003 names, the Fort Wayne headquarters at 6535 Maplecrest Road.
4. "American Association of Lutheran Churches," Wikipedia — formed 7 November 1987, the seminary's 2005 move to Fort Wayne, the national office's 2007 move and 2022 departure.
5. Paul Erdel, "The Evangelical Mennonite Church and Its Missionary Movement" — the FEC's history from inside.