BJS has as one of its goals to promote reading of the Book of Concord, either through Confessions Reading Groups, through online reading groups, or through personal reading of the Book of Concord.
The LCMS in convention last summer passed a resolution urging reading and study of the Lutheran Confessions and commended the “Concordia” edition. Here’s that resolution:
To Encourage Study of the Lutheran Confessions During Reformation Celebration
RESOLUTION 2-06; 2010 LCMS ConventionWhereas, All LCMS congregations subscribe to the “Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church” (Constitution Art II 2) as contained in the Book of Concord; and
Whereas, The 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation by the Rev Dr Martin Luther will be observed in 2017; and
Whereas, It is most appropriate for the members of a Lutheran church and other Christians to join in the celebration of that anniversary; and
Whereas, Concordia Publishing House has published resources to assist in the study of the Lutheran Confessions, including Concordia: A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord; therefore be it
Resolved, That the Synod encourage every congregation and educational institution to hold regular ongoing studies of the Book of Concord of 1580 (i.e., the Lutheran Confessions)
Res 2-06 was adopted as changed [Yes: 1,000; No: 29]
Concordia Publishing House (CPH) is again offering the Concordia edition of the Book of Concord at a substantial discount — $20 instead of $31. In addition to that they offer free shipping through Christmas on orders of $75 or more! If you don’t have your own copy of the Book of Concord, take this opportunity to purchase one or give it as a gift to your friends. Get together with others in your church to take advantage of the free shipping.
The Book of Concord is also available online, but in a harder-to-read edition, the Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church: German-Latin-English edition of 1921. The Concordia edition done in 2006 is easier reading for the modern reader, so we would recommend that all of our readers have their own edition available to them. CPH has delivered almost 100,000 of the Concordia editions since it was published.
There are three resources that will deliver the daily readings from the BoC to you by email or Twitter, as well as an online reading group that will help those who don’t have a reading group in their area.
- Daily Readings from the Book of Concord is available on the Book of Concord website; it uses the table at the beginning of the Concordia edition to break the confessions up into daily reading segments. It will send you a link to the start of the reading for each day (M-F). You can pull out your Concordia Edition and read it there, or click on the link to read it online.
To help promote reading the Book of Concord to your facebook friends, go to https://bookofconcord.org/daily periodically and click on the “recommend” button.
- Weekly Readings for the 3-year series is a bulletin insert tied to the readings of the day for your church to insert into their bulletins. This will provide a method to acquaint more church members with our confessions. These are prepared by Pastor Doug May each week.
- Weekly Readings for the 1-year series is a similar bulletin insert for those churchs who use the 1-year historic readings, prepared by Pastor Kurt Hering.
- Kari Anderson has created a discussion group on the Wittenberg Trail where she posts segments of the BoC and followers can read an discuss it. Again, you can read the segment in your own Concordia Edition if you find that reading easier for you.
Have more questions about the Book of Concord? CPH has provided a Frequently Asked Questions that may be helpful to you. One item from there, “summing things up”, is below:
To be a Lutheran is to be one who honors the Word of God. That Word makes it clear that it is God’s desire for His Church to be in agreement about doctrine and to be of one mind, living at peace with one another (1 Corinthians 1:10; 2 Corinthians 13:11). It is for that reason that we so treasure the precious confession of Christian truth that we have in the Book of Concord. For confessional Lutherans, there is no other collection of documents, statements, or books that so clearly, accurately, and comfortingly presents the truths of God’s Word and reveals the biblical Gospel as does our Book of Concord.
Hand in hand with our commitment to pure teaching and confession of the faith is, and always must be, an equally strong commitment to reaching out boldly with the Gospel and speaking God’s truth to the world. That is what confession of the faith is all about, in the final analysis. Indeed, “Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, ‘I believed, and so I spoke,’ we also believe, and so we also speak” (2 Corinthians 4:13). This is what it means to be, and to remain, a genuine confessional Lutheran.