News Briefs: May 20, 1996

Moorings, a Christian imprint of Ballantine Publishing Group, closed its Nashville office last month “due to the extremely adverse conditions in the Christian bookselling marketplace.” Publisher Bruce Barbour says the decision to close “is just one indication of the overall retrenchment now being experienced in the Christian book industry” (CT, Jan. 8, 1996, p. 57). Moorings, which began in June 1994, had six employees. Parent company Random House will continue to publish Christian books under Ballantine and Fawcett imprints. In an effort to remain competitive in the “radically changing market,” NavPress Publishing Group eliminated 11 staff positions in March, including two in its Pinon Press imprint. Spokesperson Joanne Heim says the NavPress restructuring means the Colorado Springs publisher will scale back new products in order to focus on “books that stimulate spiritual formation.”
The Crystal Cathedral Ministries board has tabbed 41-year-old Robert A. Schuller as the eventual successor of the ministry started by his father, Robert H. Schuller, in 1955. The elder Schuller is pastor of the 10,000-member Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, and host of the televised Hour of Power. His son pastors an affiliated 400-member church in San Juan Capistrano, California. Robert H. Schuller, 69, says he has no retirement plans.
Truman Dollar, who resigned in 1988 as pastor of the 9,000-member Temple Baptist Church in Detroit because of “verbal indiscretions with a woman,” committed suicide March 27 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dollar, a former columnist for Fundamentalist Journal, was 58.
U.S. District Judge William Acker has dismissed a religious discrimination suit against Samford university in Birmingham filed by professor John Killinger (CT, July 17, 1995, p. 62). Killinger claimed the Southern Baptist school discriminated against his moderate views.
William R. Jones, former comptroller of the united Methodist Board of Global Ministries, has been convicted of third-degree grand larceny in connection with embezzling nearly $400,000. In March, a judge ordered Jones to serve six months in prison, but paroled him because of two months served.

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Christianity Today May 20, 1996

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