Concordia Publishing House

Concordia Publishing House (CPH), founded in 1869, is the official publishing arm of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). Headquartered in St Louis, Missouri, at 3558 S. Jefferson Avenue, CPH publishes the synod's official monthly magazine, The Lutheran Witness, and the synod's hymnals, including The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), Lutheran Worship (1982), and Lutheran Service Book (2006). It publishes a wide range of resources for churches, schools, and homes and is the publisher of the world's most widely circulated daily devotional resource, Portals of Prayer. Its children's books, known as Arch Books, have been published in millions of copies. Concordia Publishing House is the oldest publishing company west of the Mississippi River and the world's largest distinctly Lutheran publishing house. History Background In 1849, the LCMS created a publication society to provide "the most inexpensive and most general distribution of orthodox evangelical Lutheran books for education and edification". The society was to sell bonds to congregations, pastors, teachers, and lay members of the synod, who would then be repaid with the published material. However, few wanted to pay in advance for goods that might never be received, so by 1850, the society had failed. In April 1853, C. F. W. Walther and his congregation, Trinity Lutheran Church, started a separate Evangelical Lutheran Bible Society which initially imported German Bibles and later printed its own editions. In 1857, the LCMS began using the firm of August Wiebusch und Sohn as its printer and appointed a publishing committee to negotiate prices and oversee the selection of goods to be sold. In return, Wiebusch agreed to not to print anything other than the synod's publications. This again proved to be unworkable because Wiebusch did not want his presses to sit idle when no synodical work was available. Therefore, in late 1867 or 1868, the publishing committee installed a small printing press for $3,000 on the grounds of Concordia Seminary, which at that time was on South Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis.