LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2016, Page 77

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OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
years providing us the feedback needed to make this truly the premier
Lutheran Bible study program available today.
We are also extremely pleased and humbled to have been asked
by the Synod to provide publishing support for the observance of the
500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in October 2017. We
developed and produced the website lutheranreformation.org. We continue to work with the Synod to release an ongoing series of resources
to help our congregations celebrate this significant milestone. You
will be seeing an ever-increasing amount of books, curriculum pieces,
music, and promotional pieces for our congregations to use to reach
out boldly with the confession of Christ, the Son of the living God,
calling all to repent, confess, and rejoice in His salvation.
Delivering a wide variety of resources in various digital formats
continues to be a high priority for CPH. We now offer nearly 600
of our books in the Amazon Kindle ebook format, the world’s most
widely used digital format, and we have literally hundreds of Bible
studies available for digital download and use. We are enhancing
our digital options for Sunday School and Day School curriculum.
Working in close partnership with active parish school teachers,
principals, DCEs, and professors across our Concordia University
System, we are developing innovative resources that address a wide
and diverse variety of learning styles in various teacher-driven educational formats using the latest in digital technologies.
In terms of Bible resources, we were pleased to release The
Lutheran Bible Companion, a significant two-volume work offering
a richly illustrated guide to a more in-depth exploration of the context
and meaning of the Holy Scriptures. On the other end of the spectrum,
mindful of the critical need for resources that speak to those with no
or little Bible literacy, we released Know the Bible Now, which uses
infographics to provide a broad overview of the Bible and its various literary genres and, most important, a keen focus on the center
of Scripture: the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.
We are working closely with the Commission on Theology and
Church Relations and the LCMS President’s Office as the new explanation of the Small Catechism is prepared. We will provide publishing
services and counsel as this product continues to move forward toward
its projected publication in October 2017.
We value our various publishing partnerships with entities of the
International Center. We are thrilled with our partnership with the
National Youth Gathering team, through which each youth attending
this event will receive a special Gathering edition of The Lutheran
Study Bible. We have worked closely with our partners in LCMS
International Mission to deliver Lutheran resources, in Spanish, on
iPads. These are just some of the many ongoing partnerships we have
with various agencies and entities of the Synod.
We invite all members of the Synod and all members of our congregations to visit our website, cph.org, and review the thousands of
products and services we offer, all in support of the Church’s mission,
which is our passion. May God richly bless the ongoing ministry of
confessing Christ to be the Son of God, and may He lead many more
people to repent, confess, and rejoice in the Savior.
Dr. Bruce Kintz, President/CEO
R15

Concordia University System
The reason for being (raison d’être) of the Concordia University
System (CUS) is the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. It is in Him that all knowledge can be rightly understood and
ordered: “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together”
(Colossians 1:17). This assumption flows from the confession of The
Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod that grace alone, faith alone, and

2016 Convention Workbook

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Scripture alone are the pillars of the Christian faith as articulated in
the Lutheran Confessions and the Book of Concord.
The formal incorporation of the Concordia University System in
1992 combined the historic ministries of the ten colleges and universities of the LCMS into a collaborative unit for the benefit and
enrichment of all the schools. Each of the institutions, from their
founding, is a ministry “owned and operated” by the LCMS.
Each school has provided a summary of how its mission of witness
to Jesus Christ and service to its students and communities is presently
lived out. Several recent developments are especially noteworthy (as
also exhibited in the charts), namely, the continued growth—collectively—in the number of students, the expansion of graduate programs
at the MA, EdD, and PhD levels, and the growth of professional programs—nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy. An abiding concern is
the decline in church vocations among students even as enrollment
continues to grow. President Harrison and the CUS Board have begun
several initiatives to address this concern.
Special recognition and thanks are due the presidents who are
leading these ministries of the church in higher education in the face
of significant challenges.
These societal and cultural forces include a demographic decline
in the historic pool of prospective students, an increase of often
intrusive governmental regulations, the complex impact of distance
education on all institutions of higher learning, the severe economic
challenges for students, and the increasingly competitive environments of junior colleges and cognate institutions.
As an indication that the institutions of the Concordia University
System remain defined by and embedded in the witness of the church,
the presidents and their boards of regents expressed their solidarity
with the church’s mission in an identity statement (Reporter, April
2015). This statement, along with supporting protocols, express a distinctive commitment and identity. The church can rightly rejoice and
give thanks for the following:
Lutheran Identity Standards
for Concordia University Institutions

As educational institutions of the LCMS, the colleges and universities of the Concordia University System confess the faith of
the Church.
The Concordias uphold the teachings of sacred Scripture and their
articulation in the Lutheran Confessions. This includes the biblical
teaching that Jesus Christ—true God and true man—is the sole way
to God’s mercy and grace; that at the beginning of time the triune
God created all things; that life is sacred from conception to natural
death; and that marriage between a man and a woman is a sacred gift
of God’s creative hand—over against the reductionistic assumptions
of many in our culture who view men and women as only transitory
and material beings.
As educational institutions of the LCMS, the Concordias are committed to providing an excellent, robust curriculum in the liberal arts
and professional studies, which together equip students for various
vocations of service to church and society. As C. F. W. Walther wrote,
“As long as and wherever the Christian church flourished, it always
and everywhere proved itself to be a friend and cultivator of all good
arts and sciences, gave its future servants a scholarly preparatory
training, and did not disdain to permit its gifted youth at its schools of
higher learning to be trained by the standard products of even pagan
arts and science.” Accordingly, the colleges and universities of the
Concordia University System affirm and promise to uphold these
identity standards:
1. Identity Statements—The institution’s mission statement (and/
or vision statement) clearly identifies it as an institution of the
LCMS, as do the institution’s primary print and electronic pub-

2016 Convention Workbook