In Case You Have Not Heard

Concordia Publishing House announced the sale of its 1,000,000th copy of the Lutheran Service Book hymnal -- to a Pastor from, get this, Jackpot, Nevada...  We have some 2.4 million members so that means we are up to about 1 book for every 2 people.  Not bad after not quite 4 years.  But as good as this statistic is, I am even happier about the statistic that 80% of the congregations are using the book.  That is a reason for rejoicing.  It was not long ago that we were well divided with a slim majority using Lutheran Worship and the rest mostly in The Lutheran Hymnal.  If you take out the number of congregations probably not using any hymnal at all, you would move up 3-5% more and if you dropped out the smaller congregations who may not have the resources to purchase a new book, that number of acceptance moves up even more.  In other words, we are approaching 90% of the congregations who have no real objection to the book and that is a good thing... Way to go LCMS and way to go the many who put the book together!!