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Last fall on the outskirts of Birmingham in a strip mall between Morrison's cafeteria and Kinko's copy center, the state of the art in spiritual retailing opened its doors: Disciples, the first "Christian superstore."

Not surprisingly, Disciples boasts perhaps the nation's biggest single retail concentration of Bibles, Christian books, and music. But its 100,000 titles cover only 60 percent of the 25,000 square feet of floor space. The rest is devoted to Christian-theme greeting cards, collectibles, T-shirts, and other products, ranging from angel figurines to $300 paintings of eagles.

And while nearly everything Disciples sells has religious themes, it is merchandised with as much style as any high-gloss Madison Avenue media campaign.

Couches and high-backed leather chairs invite book browsers to relax, while seven "listening stations" at the ends of aisles allow music customers to hear specifically promoted releases. A 52-inch television screen plays children's videos; three other TV sets and a personal computer offer parents and children the opportunity to "test drive" Christian games and other software.

There is even a 1,000-square-foot coffee bar and periodic performances by local Christian musicians.

"People have tended to think of Christian bookstores as just Bibles and commentaries," says Mike Murray, Disciples' director of store operations. "That's just a small portion of what we do."

A LARGE, VOLATILE MARKET: Disciples exemplifies the new reality of the commercialization of Christian culture: Unprecedented product variety, sophisticated marketing, and a retailing philosophy that focuses on competitive pricing and high customer service.

In fact, more mainstream retailers are themselves establishing separate sections of religious books and other merchandise. Taken together, the phenomena add up to boom times for sales of everything Christian.

Yet, even amid such success, there are some discomfiting rumbles within Christian retailing as store owners look toward the future. Several market and demographic forces are at work that may weaken the standing of religious retailers in coming years, including significantly greater competition, buyouts of independent stores, the aging of its core female-customer base, and pressures on book and music publishers for blockbuster titles and recordings.

The commercial success of Christian products is occurring in part because publishers, manufacturers, and retailers are catering to the tastes of baby-boomer families, whose demographic dominance has translated into a vast national market.

America's much-discussed modern search for the sacred adds to the interest. So does the simple fact that Christians are a relatively accessible market because they are so easily identified.

"Our industry is the ideal niche market," says Doug Ross, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) in Tempe, Arizona. "You can rent a mailing list of Christians. You can go to the [Christian Booksellers Association] convention. You can advertise in a variety of Christian magazines. You can reach our marketplace, if you want, with greater ease than many other markets."

Total revenues for Christian publishing have been growing for the past several years at a clip of around 6.5 percent a year, about double the inflation rate, says Byron Williamson, president of NelsonWord Publishing Group, a unit of Nashville-based industry leader Thomas Nelson, Inc. His company's sales rose nearly 21 percent through the first six months of the current fiscal year.

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January 8 1996, Vol. 40, No. 1