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Lamar and Theresa Keener know what it's like to go public. As Christian newspaper publishers for more than 15 years, they've written about public issues for a public readership. And the best way to go truly national with their paper, they believed, was to accept a bid by a publicly traded company.

And ever since, their lives have been shaped by public frustration.

In 2000, the Keeners' Christian Times was already the largest Christian newspaper in the country, but their combined 175,000 monthly circulation in eight regional areas was still limited to California.

"It was pretty much a Mom and Pop shop out of the house, with a couple of employees," Lamar Keener recalls.

Then the dot-com bust came knocking. In March 2000, iExalt Inc., a lesser-known Christian company, was one of several Internet-related, small-time stock success stories. The Houston Business Chroniclecalled it "hotter than a burning bush," reporting that "even within the sizzling Internet group, iExalt stands out for its sudden conversion from sleepy bulletin-board stock to an enormously volatile issue active on the radar screens of momentum investors."

That momentum quickly turned, and iExalt's trading high of $18 a share plummeted to below $1 during the April 2000 "market correction" that heralded the end of the dot-com millionaire era. Executives at iExalt, which touted itself as "the Christian's Gateway to the Web," turned to more traditional businesses to reinvigorate the company. They began approaching a series of existing companies, such as the Capital Artist Agency, Alive Communications Speakers Bureau, Life Perspectives and Dawson McAllister Live radio programs, and Rapha Christian Counseling. And the Internet company saw old-fashioned print newspapers as an important part of its new multimedia vision

For the Keeners, the iExalt offer was the fulfillment of a dream. "We wanted to go nationwide," Lamar Keener recalls. All they needed was money—which iExalt promised to raise through sales of stock.

"We sold for stock only, no cash," Lamar said. And it worked. "In the next 18 months, we doubled our circulation to 330,000 copies a month."

More importantly, Christian Times expanded beyond California as existing titles were purchased and renamed, and new editions were launched. By mid-2001, Christian Times was delivering 330,000 newspapers to churches in Texas, Colorado, Oregon, and California. Each edition had its own local content as well as national news.

But the dream didn't last for long, especially as the tech bubble continued to burst and the 9/11 attacks upended the economy.

"We never did get funded the way we were supposed to," Lamar said. "By 2001, at the end of the year we were way in debt, and we had to lay off half our staff. We shut down several papers because we had to get back to a break-even basis."

Forced into bankruptcy, iExalt began selling its companies until its only remaining asset was Keener Communications, the publishing wing that included Christian Times. The Keeners dreamed of buying their eponymous organization back, but had themselves become debilitated by iExalt's near-worthless stock price.

Then another public company offered a way out.

Kingdom Ventures, iExalt, and the Keeeners agreed to a three-step arrangement in June 2003. Kingdom Ventures would loan the Keeners $100,000 to purchase the company back from iExalt. In exchange, Kingdom Ventures received:

• An option to purchase a national license to Christian Times for $50,000.
• A later option to buy the Christian Times trademark by canceling the $100,000 loan.

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48