When using any "index" or finding aid, determine exactly what it indexes and what it does not. Ancestry.com recently released an index of records of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The index includes records of vital events. The actual digital images for some churches include confirmation records, communion records, family records and more.
Only using the index in this case is limiting.
So true! And in the records you mentioned, I have found that the indexing for place names is either incomplete or in some cases inaccurate. If your family came from a small church, you will need to look for a nearby church for records as they were often combined. I also found the records for one church incorrectly linked to a city over 200 miles away. In that case, the search helped to find the records, and a page by page search helped to unearth many more.
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