Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsHow to Save the Christian Bookstore
The phone rang Saturday night at 8:30, just as we were putting our two toddlers to bed. The caller was a pastor with an emergency: while getting ready for services the next morning, he discovered his church was out of Communion bread—a familiar problem. Jeff jumped in the car and drove downtown to our small Christian bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana, to provide it.
From 1983 to 1993, we sold everything from curricula to candles, Communion bread to contemporary fiction. We read the books we sold and enjoyed hand-selling them to customers, many of whom we knew by first name and reading preferences. Serious reference volumes and niche books that met a felt need stayed on the shelf, sometimes collecting dust, waiting for the right pastor or customer to walk through the door. We talked with seekers, prayed with those who were hurting, did impromptu counseling, and hosted midnight music parties and pastors' breakfasts. Our staff members were encouraged to drop what they were doing if someone needed to talk. And we weren't alone. Bloomington had three other Christian bookstores, all with the same sort of books, products, and ministry heart.
Today, not one of the four is left.
Riding the Roller Coaster
In the past two decades, Christian retail has taken a roller coaster ride. The CBA (formerly the Christian Booksellers Association), a Colorado Springs–based trade association for retailers, says that as recently as the mid-'80s it had 3,000 members of an estimated 4,000 Christian retail stores. Today CBA has 1,813 members of an estimated 2,800 stores.
According to CBA, just 98 stores were added in 2007, compared to 589 in 2006 and 437 in 2005. Store closures continue, although they've slowed: 160 in 2007, compared to 286 in ...
This article is currently available to CT subscribers only.
To continue reading:
or
Star Trek Into Darkness
(on articles open to the public, you must at least register for a free account).
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Newsletters
Google
Comments
Displaying 1–3 of 41 comments
See all comments
jh
In visiting my local (national chain) Christian bookstore (in a community of 100,000 plus), I sometimes wonder if it is really a "bookstore" there seems to be more floor space dedicated to trinkets and home decorations, things I seldom buy. I find the staff to be nearly invisable and if I do find someone available, they are not very knowledgable. Most of the bookshelves are dedicated to romance books, feel good theology. and endorsing questionable theology. I have to ask, why pay full price for this, when I can buy at a discount on-line for similar service and better selection, or I can drive an hour to another town with a variety of Christian bookstores dedicated to books and with staff desiring to help and know the products that they have.
Matt Copeland
Maybe some of the cause for the Christian bookstore demise has to do with the failure of these bookstores to represent any other stream of Christian faith outside an evangelical/fundamentalist/conservative worldview. I stopped going to Christian bookstores because I was sick of seeing rows of Ann Coulter books lambasting liberals and democrats; rows of parenting books by James Dobson, Roy Lessin, Charles Swindol, Ted Tripp, and the Pearls all explaining God's will for you to beat or hit your children with wooden boards, rods, belts, and your hands in order to teach them (eventhough it has been shown that such treatment can cause harm, and despite the fact that there are no biblical passages showing the difference between so called non-abusive biblical CP and abuse.) Not to mention the rows of awful christian fiction like Left Behind. Where are the books by christians like Brennan Manning; Madeline L' Engle; Brian McClaren; Gary Willis? They seem far more reasonable and intelligent.
Brutus
For Me it is all about price. Quit telling me it is your "ministry." Bookstores in this area are still charging full retail. Amazon.......that's the Christian bookstore I shop.