Lutheran Mideast Development began as the Lutheran Orient Mission Societ. In 1910, the Protestant International Conference for Foreign Missions met in Edinburgh, Scotland. A principal goal of the conference was to assign neglected fields of service to delegates of the Christian denominations in attendance. Lutheran representatives arrived from the United States and Germany already championing the cause of the Kurds; they were rewarded with a commission to develop a mission among them..

In response, the Lutherans formed an independent organization that could serve both American and European Lutheran Churches, working across state and synodical lines.

Within months, the organization commissioned two field workers to send to Kurdistan and resolved to publish a journal, "The Kurdistan Missionary." With its first issue in October 1910, the Inter-Synodical Evangelical Lutheran Orient Mission Society was born.