The Lutheran Altar Book is an extremely informative book and has a lot of great resources for the running of the worship service. I will however, start this review with my one BIG complaint about the book: it is huge! It tops out at 1002 pages. I have heard one pastor say he would like a lazy suzanne for it to make it easier to access it from both sides of the altar and that keeping it open to the right page can be a challenge when it is towards one end of the book or another. I have given it the nickname of ballast due to its weight. However, having gotten this complaint out of the way, let us look at the up side of this resource.
One of the big aids it has is the propers for each of the years in the three year cycle as wells as the propers for the one year cycle. This is a large contributor to its size but I agree with the reasons behind it. Instead of having generic propers in the three year cycle and it not really fitting any of the readings for any of the years, they have custom fit propers that do the Sunday right.
It also has the complete Psalter instead of missing 43 like the pew edition does. In addition to this, there are the special service for the church year as well as the special life event services like baptism, confirmation, wedding and funeral. It is full of rubrics and page reference to the pew edition so you can have a connection between the books so you know from the altar book where you would be in the pew edition.
As with the pew edition, there is a lot more here than I think I can handle well in a single post. I will be returning to look at specific features as I get the quick first roung look done. Until then.
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