Almost daily, we at Concordia Publishing House (CPH) ask ourselves, “Who will use this? And how?” We know that a perfectly designed resource isn’t really perfect if, ultimately, the people who need it can’t find it, or don’t consider it helpful, or get frustrated engaging with it. If we can’t adequately answer these questions, we go back to the drawing board.
At some point, though, we have to launch. We make the best plan we can conceive of and go forward with it. It’s our task, then, to package faithful, biblical, confessional Lutheran content for you, the readers, so that you’ll find it helpful in bringing you to the Word of God, nurturing your faith in Christ, or—especially in the case of our Words of Worship resources—teaching the language of our faith to your children.
The grant we received from Lilly Endowment Inc. is allowing us to make an exciting improvement to that process. It’s allowing us, for the sake of the children, to ask another question: not just “Who?” and “How?” but also “What else?” What else do parents need? What else will help pastors teach the children in their congregation? What else will support the musicians, the Sunday School teachers, and others as they serve not only the adults but also the children, who belong no less to our heavenly Father?
The way this looks, practically, is genuinely exciting. We have collaborated with about fifty congregations to envision a new set of children’s resources that teach them the common language of our faith as we find it in the prayers, hymns, and services of Lutheran Service Book. And when those books, toys, and music resources all become available, we’ll work closely with the families and workers in those congregations to test them out.
They’ll help us answer these questions: Who is using this? How are they using it? But we’ll especially press into that third question: What else do they need? This is our rare opportunity: to reflect and improve, to help encourage the adults as they teach the children, and then to hear back on what would help them do it even better—and to develop that.
The title of this blog post is “From Proposal to Approval.” That’s because we move everything we do through a rigorous process designed to assure that we’re stewarding as faithfully as we are able the resources God has entrusted to CPH. Step 1 is the proposal. And the approval is step 17 or so. Typically, even further down the list is feedback from the church.
We’re especially thankful at CPH to be able to preplan reaction to that feedback in Words of Worship. It’s our frequent prayer that these resources will help enable the teaching of God’s enduring Word to a new generation.
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