# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S597
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

PUBLICATION MATTERS 597

LUTHER, to comprise no less than fifty-five volumes, was initiated
by your Board. The first volume was published in November 1955,
and the second should be on the market by about September
of this year. According to present plans, Concordia will pub-
lish thirty volumes of the EXEGETICAL WORKS of the great
Reformer, while Muhlenberg Press of the United Lutheran Church
will produce twenty-five volumes of other writings of Luther.
Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, former professor of Concordia Seminary,
St. Louis, was appointed editor in chief of our part of the program,
and a subcommittee of the Board is in frequent consultation
with him.

The Religious Bodies of America, by the late Dr. Frederick

A. Mayer, and The Lutheran Cyclopedia, edited by Dr. Erwin L.
Lueker, two major reference works published during the past
triennium, have been most favorably received. The first printing
of the former was sold in a few months, and a second printing with
minor revisions is already on the market.

Two scholarly commentaries, Jeremiah and Minor Prophets,
by Dr. Theodore Laetsch, now on the market, and St. Luke, by
Dr. William Arndt, now in work at Concordia Publishing House,
are the first books to appear in our long-range program to produce
scholarly commentaries by Lutheran writers.

A brief COMMENTARY covering the entire Bible, with the
average lay reader as the target, is still in the planning stage.

Mention should be made of a new PASTORAL THEOLOGY
which was outlined by your Board; the manuscripts are being
prepared by experts in the several areas covered. It is expected
that this item can be put into work at Concordia by the fall of
this year.

Portals of Prayer, our popular devotional booklet, now in its
20th-anniversary year, has proved to be a large blessing to many
people. A number of issues have now exceeded the 800,000 mark;
the German counterpart continues at about 33,000 copies per issue.
A special 20th-anniversary booklet consisting of selected medita-
tions from past issues of Portals of Prayer, covering an entire year,
is being produced.

An area in which activity has been stepped up considerably
in the last triennium is the tract-publication program. No month
passed without the appearance of one or more new tracts on the
market, and from twenty to thirty new tracts, in various stages
of production, have always been on our docket. A special com-
mittee has been appointed to study ways and means of wider
distribution. , .

A workshop was held in January of this year at Concordia
Teachers College, River Forest, under the sponsorship of the

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