Major Update to the LCMS Convention App

Handbook converted to text with citations links stretches the Convention App to 1 million words. New scripture reference citation links are also embedded.

The Handbook, in full text and searchable

The 2023 Handbook is now an independent section of the LCMS 2026 Convention app. The entire document is presented as fully searchable text, with one chapter per page, a per-page table of contents, anchors at every numbered identifier, and a soft grey paragraph-counter in the left margin (but removed for mobile use).

Click a Bylaw, see the Bylaw

Every Bylaw and Constitutional citation in app, overtures, reports, Handbook prose, and editorial articles is now a live link with an immediate view instead of jumping back and forth between pages.

Click Bylaw 1.10.18.1 in the middle of an overture, and a panel opens over the page showing the cited paragraph, with its parent section title above it and a Read in full context → link beneath it. The reader stays in the document they were reading; the citation comes to them.

Click a Scripture reference, and see the verse

The same convenience is now extended to Scripture. Click any verse reference in any prose on the site, an overture, a CTCR report, the Handbook itself, an editorial, and a tabbed modal opens with the verse text in seven readings:

• NKJV — the default tab.

• Brenton LXX — Old Testament only.

• LXX (Greek) — Old Testament only.

• Greek RP 2018 — New Testament only, Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Majority Text

• Greek UBS5 — United Bible Societies 5th Revised Edition

• Greek NA28 — Nestle-Aland 28th Edition

• Greek SRGNT — Statistical Restoration Greek New Testament

The reference parser handles every form encountered in the corpus: single verses, ranges, cross-chapter ranges (Acts 15–17), sub-verse markers (Mark 16:9b), whole-chapter references, and whole-chapter ranges (Genesis 1–3).

Better overture pages

The overture page templates carry three small but consequential changes:

• The Workbook page number displayed on every overture is now a deep link into the official 2026 (or 2023) Workbook PDF, opening in a new tab at the exact page using the standard #page=N fragment.

• The committee name in the overture’s metadata block links through to the relevant floor committee’s index page.

• The overture submitters link to their host pages, and congregations and circuits to a search-fallback that resolves their best canonical page.

Site total

The site indexes 1,845 statically-rendered pages, including eleven new Handbook pages (the Handbook table of contents, the Constitution, the seven Bylaw chapters, the Articles of Incorporation, and the supporting index entries).