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In fact, as pastor Brian McLaren writes in Finding Faith (Zondervan 1999), the Bible is the next-to-last place seekers turn to find spiritual guidance. (The last place, McLaren claims, is the church.)

Glenn Paauw (pronounced "pow") of the International Bible Society (IBS) believes this can change. "The signs are all around us: American culture is on a spiritual search," says Paauw, director of product development for the Colorado Springs-based ministry. Paauw sees a phenomenal opportunity for ministry, and he doubts that ministries like IBS can respond to it merely by doing business as usual.

Founded as the New York Bible Society in 1809, IBS spent its first century on pioneering distribution programs that placed Scriptures directly in the hands of people who needed them, including sunburned bathers on America's beaches and frostbitten members of Richard Byrd's expeditions to the North and South poles. The society also placed Bibles in hotel rooms half a century before Gideons International existed.

But the 20th century brought big changes to IBS. Acting on pleas from evangelists and the National Association of Evangelicals for a faithful but readable English Bible translation, IBS commissioned the New International version (NIV) translation in 1967. First published in 1978—through an arrangement that grants Zondervan rights to publish various retail editions but allows IBS to create low-cost ministry editions—the NIV rapidly became the most popular contemporary translation, bringing the organization newfound prominence and millions of dollars in annual income.

Ironically, the ministry's evolution took it further away from both its humble origins and its historic commitment to putting Scriptures directly in the hands of people who needed them.

"It's easy to become a cog in the parachurch machine," says Paauw, who found himself growing eager to do something different through IBS. "We were missing an unprecedented opportunity."

With minimal funding, Paauw invited interested IBS employees to join something he called the "direct-to-culture" group, which consists of highly motivated people like himself who squeeze time for the group's activities out of already overbooked schedules.

The group draws part of its inspiration from these verses in Hebrews 13, as rendered by Eugene Peterson's translation in The Message: "So let's go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This 'insider' world is not our home."

One of the first challenges Paauw gave the group was to begin conducting "spiritual archaeology," a form of cultural research he defines as "finding out what people think about Christianity, Christians, and the Bible." Some of the group's initial findings were less than encouraging.

During the past two years, members of the direct-to-culture group have assembled a diverse collection of "contemporary spiritual artifacts" such as spiritually themed consumer goods, best-selling books, and popular magazines and musical recordings.

These artifacts included copies of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine, books (What Would Buddha Do?), compact discs (Jonathan Elias's The Prayer Cycle and a musical companion to Neal Donald Walsch's Conversations with God books), and a bottle of "Blue Mandarin Zen" hand and body cream, part of the "Time Out for Spirituality" line at Sears.

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April 23 2001, Vol. 45, No. 6