A Hymnal Congregations Could Not Get Fast Enough

Congregations wanted Evangelical Lutheran Worship faster than publishers could supply it. Demand following the October 2006 release was strong enough to sell out both the first and the second printings, forcing some congregations to delay their own switch from the old Lutheran Book of Worship simply because copies of the new one were not yet available to buy, an unusually strong reception for a denominational worship book whose adoption is typically a slow, parish by parish process rather than a rush. The old book it was replacing had itself run for twenty eight years without a full successor, so the change, once the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly approved it, arrived as a single sharp transition for congregations used to one shared hymnal for most of their adult lives rather than as a gradual handover.

The book's own life has continued to grow since that first release. In 2020, the ELCA published All Creation Sings, a supplement adding 200 further hymns to the same worship tradition rather than replacing Evangelical Lutheran Worship itself, treating the 2006 book as a stable foundation to be built onto rather than a fixed and finished text. Fourteen years after publication, it remains the ELCA and ELCIC's primary liturgical and worship resource, the book its 654 core hymns and psalter were written to be, recognizable on any pew shelf by the cranberry cover and graphic cross logo Augsburg Fortress gave it. Its adoption across two national church bodies at once, rather than as a purely American production later exported north, also set it apart from the more strictly national character of its 1978 predecessor.