Most hymnals arrive on a church's shelf without a vote ever being taken on them by name. Lutheran Service Book did not. In 2004, delegates at the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's own National Convention in St. Louis formally approved the book two years before a single copy existed, an act of denominational governance applied to a hymnal the way it might be applied to a doctrinal statement.
The book that resulted, prepared by the Synod's own Commission on Worship and released September 1, 2006, was built to replace two predecessors at once, The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Worship, folding the Synod's divided worship life back into a single common book: 635 hymns, 107 psalms, five settings of the Divine Service and five Daily Offices. It became the fourth official English language hymnal the Synod has published since it began moving away from German worship in the early twentieth century, a lineage of its own that stretches back further than most of its members probably realize.
The publisher was not a neutral third party either. Concordia Publishing House, which printed and continues to sell the book, is owned outright by the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, the same institution that publishes the Synod's official magazine, The Lutheran Witness. In April 2015 the book became the first Lutheran hymnal available as an ebook, a small modern footnote on a volume whose real distinction is having been approved, prepared and printed entirely inside the institution whose pews it now fills.