Gordon Phillip Winrod was born in Wichita, Kansas on December 30, 1926, to Gerald Burton Winrod.[4] He attended a Lutheran day school (grades 1 through 8), finished high school at Hesston High School in Hesston, Kansas,[citation needed] and attended St. John's College in Winfield, Kansas.
From January 1945 to August 1948, Winrod served in the U.S. Maritime Service and the U.S. Navy. He married Genevieve Ann Dicke in Topeka, Kansas, in 1948. They had eleven children.
Winrod graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, in 1955. He then served as pastor of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) congregations in San Antonio, Texas, and in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In April 1960 he began publishing The Winrod Letter. Soon thereafter the LCMS expelled him from its ministerial roster.
Winrod moved to Gainesville, Missouri in 1965 and established Our Savior's Independent Christian congregation. He was released from prison in 2012, and died in Rutledge, Alabama on August 29, 2018, at the age of 91.[5]