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Augsburg Fortress plans layoffs, store closings, end of consumer sales: Textbook offerings to be increased

The publishing arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is ending its consumer-oriented book sales and will focus instead on supplying materials for congregations and textbooks for higher education, it was announced last month.

Augsburg Fortress, the ELCA publishing ministry based in Minneapolis, will eliminate 55 jobs among its 242 full- and part-time employees, starting at the end of 2008, and will add 13 positions in shifting its priorities to Lutheran needs.

Seminaries tighten their belts: Wartburg suspending M.A. program

When 85 new students enrolled this fall at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, the numbers were “beyond our wildest dreams,” said President Duane Larson. But the Lutheran school’s board, looking at a 35 percent drop in its endowment value and a similar decline in individuals gifts, also had to face up to stark financial realities.

The stock market downturn and tightened credit forced the board to take actions that its directors had contemplated earlier because of budget problems over the past decade.