LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 34

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

OO SSSSSIEISSSSSS?'SSuéS =

34 SYNODICAL REPORTS

We also seek to serve the church through partnerships. In the
Past three years we have collaborated on numerous projects with
the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League, Lutheran Hour Min-
istries, Lutheran Family Association, Aid Association for Luther-
ans. Lutheran Brotherhood, LCMS Missions, our Synod’s Com-
mission on Worship, and the various departments of the Board for
Congregational Services, to name but a few. Each of these partner-
ships enabled us to hone in ona particular need or an Opportunity to
be of service.

_ A big part of serving well our congregations is keeping prices as
low as possible while maintaining quality and being innovative in
design. Each employee at CPH works hard at minimizing expense
so that each church always receives the best value for its dollar.

CPH Mission Focus: Our Products

We develop Gospel resources faithful to our Lutheran heritage.
CPH maintains this focus by concentrating on its areas of excel-
lence:

1. The Christian Education Specialist. (This is our primary
identity as we move into the 21st century.)

2. Premier provider of worship resources and church support/
services.

3. Provider of scholarly resources and multiethnic resources.

This is how these areas of excellence have “blossomed” in the
1996-98 triennium.

The Christian Education Specialist

The last three years have seen an explosion at CPH in the area
of family and children’s resources. We've developed a fine cata-
log of children’s picture books, more entries in the ever-popular
Arch Book series, activity books for the young child, helps on fam-
ily and parenting, devotions for family life, and spiritual resources
for youth.

Speaking of family Ministry, our newest “baby” is the quarterly
newspaper FamilyTalk. Each issue contains articles on moral de-
velopment and faith talk. This quarterly can be purchased by
churches in bulk for distribution to their members and their com-
munity,

Last year, 1997, saw the introduction of a brand new Sunday
school curriculum, We kept the fine name—Our Life in Christ—
but there are many improvements. One change is the introduction
of an adult level through which parents and grandparents can also
study the same Bible story the children are hearing about in their
classes. This has proven to be a 200d tool for stimulating faith talk
in the home (where most faith transmittal still happens) and for
evangelism.

Another important way of doing neighborhood evangelism and
education at the same time is vacation Bible school. Each summer
CPH publishes a new, creative, and flexible VBS.

Today’s Light is our new and distinctively Lutheran two-year
walk through the Bible. A very fine study for groups and individu-
als.

As another part of the Synodical emphasis to “be in the Word”
CPH has developed several new Bible Studies, including special
courses for family, men, women, and young adults, along with our
popular Church Year series and the Bible Impact and Bible Insights
series for youth.

We have several resources to assist churches as they work to
Strengthen marriage and parenting skills. The latest of these is the
video course The Power of We.

This is but a sampling of some of the resources for church,
school, and home developed in the last three years that strengthen
CPH'’s position as the Christian Education Specialist. (To this end,
we've also added deployed Christian Education Specialists. See de-
scription below under “Service.”)

Premier Provider of Worship Resources and Church Support/Services

CrossTalk premiered in 1996. This quarterly packet of “fresh
ideas and lively conversation” combines a newsletter, cassette in-
terviews “from the field,” and reproducibles for discerning pastors,
DCEs, teachers, and others.

Homiletical resources have increased recently. Building on the
popularity of our quarterly publication, Concordia Pulpit Re-

sources, CPH has issued a number of books on preaching, includ-
ing Narrative Preaching by David Mulder and two sets of sermons
for special occasions by the recently sainted Don Deffner.

We've also released a steady stream of books for the church
professional. Most widely heralded have been the recent booklet
Becoming Money Wise: Biblical and Practical Principles Encour-
aging Faithful Management of God’s Money and Tom Rogers’ Life
in the Fishbowl, along with collections of children’s sermons, new
ideas in youth ministry, the training of volunteer teachers and the
like.

Our music and worship department has sustained an ambitious
publishing plan of sheet music for all kinds (and sizes) of choirs,
organists and keyboardists, and handbell groups. In addition sev-
eral new types of products have been developed:

* A new line of piano music suitable for use in Lutheran churches,

* A Hymnal Companion for Winds (arrangements of hymns for
band instruments)

° Every Voice a Song—pipe organ accompaniment for 180 hymns
and Divine Service II on audio CD. Intended for use in small
congregations, classrooms, and homes.

“Symphony of Hymns”—MIDI computer files which can be uti-
lized to accompany congregational singing with a full comple-
ment of keyboard and orchestral sounds.

* W3—Word Witness Worship— is a unique expanding CD-ROM
subscription of resources for the practicing pastor. Helpful in de-
veloping sermons, service folders, class outlines, and more. A li-
brary resource that harnesses an enormous collection of profes-
sional resources: biblical, homiletical, scholarly, interpretative,
theological, and linguistic.

Provider of Scholarly Resources and Multiethnic Resources

CPH continues to publish important scholarly theological works
as well by focusing on several fronts.

The Concordia Commentary series was launched to critical ac-
claim in 1997 with its first two volumes (on Luke). The purpose of
this series is to enable pastors, missionaries, and teachers of the
Scriptures to convey God’s Word with greater clarity, understand-
ing, and faithfulness to the divine intent of the original message. It
could well be argued that this series will be the most significant
contribution from our period of publishing.

The Concordia Scholarship Today series released several im-
Portant works within the last triennium. Among these are The Fab-
ricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth, God’s Song
in a New Land: Lutheran Hyninals in America, Testing the Bound-
aries: Windows to Lutheran Identity, and Martin Luther: Learning
Sor Life:

Our Concordia Academic Press efforts are headed by two sepa-
rate “teams.” The Seminary group has recently released its initial
offerings—Justification and Rome by Robert Preus; The “I” in the
Storm: A Study of Romans 7 by Michael Paul Middendorf; and
When God Becomes My Enemy: The Theology of the Complaint
Psalms by Ingvar Floysvik. The University group will begin re-
leasing publications later this year.

The CPH “Classic” reprints will be a way of providing historic
works in limited print runs utilizing the latest technology.

Our Multiethnic Resources Department has been very busy as
well, listening and developing toward the needs of various and di-
verse ministry settings. These are some of their efforts during
1996-98:

* Luther's Small Catechism in Spanish

* Luther’s Small Catechism in Vietnamese

* Four Occasional Liturgies in Spanish

* Kurth’s Carechetical Helps in Chinese

* My Stories about Jesus (a book for young children) in Chinese
° Follow Me/Sigueme (a confirmation booklet)

* A manual for first Communion in Hispanic Lutheran churches
* Bible studies on Genesis and Isaiah in Spanish

* Portals of Prayer in Spanish

* Teologia y Mision en America Latina (theological work)