Quick Facts

Locations

• Corporate offices: Minneapolis, MN
• Distribution Center: Grove City, OH
• Stores: Augsburg Fortress operates Retail Stores across the United States and Canada

Products Developed Each Year

• Eleven major curricula for Sunday school, confirmation, youth, and vacation Bible school use, as well as small-group ministry and adult Bible study resources.
• Three weekly bulletin series and worship/lectionary inserts, and two seasonal bulletin lines.
• More than 58 vocal/instrumental works and 6 volumes of the Renewing Worship series of provisional worship resources for the ELCA.
• Three devotional quarterlies: Christ in Our Home, The Word in Season, and Davey and Goliath's Devotions.
• More than 93 books under the Fortress Press, Augsburg Books, Augsburg Fortress, and Lutheran Voices imprints.
• More than 500 other publications to further faith development and congregational life.
• Friar Tuck by Augsburg Fortress® — clergy apparel for men and women.
• The Lydia Collection by Augsburg Fortress™ — exclusively for women.
• Four new fundraising programs each year.
• More than 500 downloadable resources available online for music, education, certificates, and discussion guides.

Best-Sellers

• Splash! A line of birth to three faith formation resources specifically designed for families with infants and toddlers.
• Sundays and Seasons.com — more than 1,200 churches subscribed in the first three months of availability
• No Experience Necessary
  • More than 600 ELCA congregations are using this new Bible study
  • Successful 2005 Synod Assembly Workshop Introductions (35,000 copies of Unit 1 given out to participants).
• The Lutheran Handbook
  • Over 100,000 copies in print, now in its 6th printing.
• Here We Stand:
  • Field tested this new confirmation resource during development in 2005 with more than 170 ELCA congregations across the country
• Worship — Renewing Worship Songbook
• Worship — With One Voice Pew Edition — 30,000 copies of each sold this year
• Supplies — Community and Celebration Certificates, wafers, communion cups Cathedral Candles®, Lux Mundi® Oil Candles, ELCA Stewardship Offering Envelopes, and Davey and Goliath Children's Envelopes.
• Exclusive parament designs for Augsburg Fortress from Art Studio Slabbinck®
• Extensive Collection of Vestments, Choir and Pulpit Robes, Worship Appointments and Furnishings.
• Books — Good Grief by Granger Westberg is our all-time best seller with nearly 90,000 copies sold so far in 2005. Ending Hunger Now by George McGovern, Bob Dole and Donald Messer is our best selling new fall 2005 title with 9,000 copies released in the first month!

Award-Winning Resources

• Nature, Human Nature and God by Ian Barbour; Technology and Human Becoming by Philip Hefner; and Creation by Alistar McGrath — each received the 2005 Templeton Foundation Books of Distinction Award.
  
  
• Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble by Mitri Raheb received the Spirituality & Health Magazine "Best Spiritual Book of 2004." The award was announced in May 2005.
  
  
• By Design or By Chance: The Growing Controversy on the Origins of Life by Denise O'Leary won two top honors in the Canadian Christian Writers Awards in 2005. The book won the top award in the category "Books on Culture" and the category of "Personal Growth/Bible Study and Theology."
  
  
• Shared Wisdom: Use of the Self in Pastoral Care and Counseling won the 2005 Distinguished Achievement in Research and Writing Award from the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.

Other Products and Services

• Church directory service
• Assistance in selecting resources to meet the needs of congregations

Relationship to the ELCA

Augsburg Fortress is the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It is a separate not-for-profit corporation which has its own 21-member board. The responsibilities assigned to Augsburg Fortress are described in Section 16.30 of the ELCA Constitution.

Augsburg Fortress market/product developers work with ELCA churchwide staff through the use of Resource Management Teams. Prior to publication, products are reviewed by Lutherans throughout the church. Once published, field sales representatives work closely with regions, synods, and ELCA congregations to introduce new resources.

Augsburg Fortress also operates the ELCA Distribution Service to make available to congregations those publications which have been developed by the ELCA churchwide staff.

The publishing house has a retail store and an office in the Lutheran Center at O'Hare Plaza in Chicago.

Other Cooperative Relationships

Augsburg Fortress works closely with other organizations:

• National Council of Churches and subgroups including:
  • NRSV Bible Translation Utilization
  • Committee on Uniform Series
• The Fisher's Net
• Consultation on Common Texts

Augsburg Fortress is a member of the following organizations:

• Evangelical Church Publishers Association (ECPA)
• Church Music Publishers Association (CMPA)
• Cooperative Publishers Association
• Associated Church Press (ACP)—The Lutheran and Lutheran Woman Today

Augsburg Fortress staff persons are members of many professional organizations including:

• Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM)
• American Choral Directors Association (ACDA)
• American Guild of Organists (AGO)
• American Academy of Religion (AAR)
• Society for Biblical Literature (SBL)
• Religious Education Association
• Evangelical Lutheran Education Association (ELEA)
• North American Academy of Liturgy