Posted on 03/25/2019 3:52:06 PM PDT by robowombat
LifeWay store closures lamented as 'a great loss'
by David Roach
The closure of all 170 LifeWay Christian Stores will be “a great loss,” said LifeWay customer Sarah Beth Van Dyke of Gallatin, Tenn.
NASHVILLE (BP) -- Sarah Beth Van Dyke shopped at LifeWay Christian Stores during her childhood when they were called Baptist Bookstores. She worked in a LifeWay store in graduate school, and now she takes her two children to LifeWay to spend their allowance money. Generally, she shops at a LifeWay store multiple times every month. With all 170 LifeWay stores set to close this year, Van Dyke said Christians will lose "a unique chance to shop for Christian books, Bibles, studies, music and gifts with confidence, knowing that the [re]sources [have] been through a vetting process before making it onto the shelves for purchase."
As LifeWay stores begin to disappear, LifeWay supporters and critics alike say the brick-and-mortar book market will lose an important means of theological quality control. They also wonder if another theologically trusted brick-and-mortar option will emerge.
"I enjoyed being able to take my children to LifeWay to participate in their summer reading program and various other children's events, and they too have come to love the store as I do," said Van Dyke, a member of First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tenn. "They look forward to going in LifeWay stores to spend their hard-earned allowance money, and I have been able to rest in the assurance that items my children pick are biblically sound."
For Van Dyke, the physical LifeWay stores are important, especially when shopping for a Bible, because they allow her "to thumb through the Bible physically before purchasing to see the layout and flow of the study notes, etc. This same process cannot be achieved through online stores or with the limited selection of other brick and mortar stores."
Rachel Held Evans, a Christian author who says LifeWay stores opted not to carry her 2012 book "A Year of Biblical Womanhood," tweeted March 20-21, "The average reader has no idea just how large LifeWay loomed over Christian publishing, and just how many voices and ideas it managed to stifle" with its "strict, fundamentalist standards" for the books sold in LifeWay stores.
Over the years, LifeWay has opted not to carry books on visiting heaven and books by Jen Hatmaker, Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald among other authors, Christianity Today reported.
Indiana pastor Tim Overton agreed LifeWay stores are known for their theological standards. But he sees that as a positive.
"In the information age, the difficulty is not finding material," said Overton, pastor of Kingston Avenue Baptist Church in Anderson, Ind. "It's finding quality material. I think one of the greatest competitive advantages LifeWay could have had, and had in some ways, was being trustworthy, where pastors could tell their congregations, 'You can go into the store, and anything you buy is trustworthy.'"
Overton is among a group of pastors who have gone to microphones "numerous times" at Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings over the years, he said, to make motions and offer resolutions asking LifeWay to pull from its shelves material the pastors viewed as theologically suspect. While LifeWay has not always done what Overton wanted, "there's no doubt LifeWay did a better job of [selling trustworthy resources] than other retailers."
Because of its status as an SBC entity, LifeWay "was unique [among bookstores] in holding very high standards and not simply allowing a profit to motivate all choices," Overton said.
In the end, however, profit margin was precisely the problem for LifeWay stores.
By late 2018, LifeWay leaders realized revenue declines at stores "had not reversed" despite efforts to revamp retail locations, former LifeWay President Thom Rainer told trustees in February. The closing of an unnamed number of LifeWay stores was announced in January, with the closure of all stores announced this month by acting president and CEO Brad Waggoner.
Rainer called LifeWay stores "the last man standing" among major Christian bookstore chains after Family Christian Stores closed two years ago.
Steve Christensen, owner of the independent bookstore Bibles Plus in Albuquerque, N.M., told Baptist Press "peak" sales for Christian bookstores came in 2002-2003. Bibles Plus has "been able to weather these 17 or 18 years of this kind of [industry] decline" by "maintaining a lower overhead." Still, the store's sales volume is 40 percent of what it was in 2002-2003.
Most Christian bookstore customers seem to be between ages 50 and 80, lack "tech savvy" and do not want to buy online, Christensen said, though "a few" younger customers still want to handle books before they purchase them.
As Christian bookstores inevitably close, Christensen said, a major loss is the ministry that occurs with customers. "You try to really see what their needs are," he said. " ... There are opportunities to pray with people that are going through crisis situations."
Yet Rainer told LifeWay trustees in February even the volume of ministry testimonies from stores is shrinking as brick-and-mortar sales decline.
When LifeWay stores close and the SBC's publishing entity shifts entirely to online sales, some customers see no alternate venue for the ministry and theological quality control offered by LifeWay stores.
"The closing of LifeWay stores will be a great loss to my family," Van Dyke said. "While almost all of the products LifeWay offers can be purchased at other retailers or online, we have continued to shop at LifeWay Christian Stores exclusively and will not be taking our business to another retailer or to an online platform."
David Roach is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention's news service. BP reports on missions, ministry and witness advanced through the Cooperative Program and on news related to Southern Baptists' concerns nationally and globally.
Over the years, LifeWay has opted not to carry books on visiting heaven
I agree that it is a loss. Lifeway management has become disconnected with Southern Baptist and Christian people.
[Family Christian stores]
I definitely liked going there.
Sad to see Lifeway stores go. Not against e- books but the old paperbound books require no electricity nor digital devices to read them. Easier to flip through them too.
I have been to one of those, but that was back in the late 1990s.
Theological quality control is The Bible. However, I hate to see Lifeway go. It was always great fun to browse when the kids needed a new series.
My experience with the local Lifeway store was that “customer service” was pretty much non-existent.
Never more than one cashier...if you could even find one when ready to check out.
Seems like they were their own worse enemy.
Would you expand a bit?
The group I worked with had their own liberal interpretations.
They had to shut down and now operate under a different name.
I was told “people weren’t buying their materials”. That’s because people who actually read the Bible aren’t buying your spin, or so it turned out.
You reach a point where buying a bigger house to fit more book cases into just isn’t practical any more.
I remember reading Danny Orlis books that my mom got for me at a Christian bookstore in the ‘60s-70s.
bkmk
It’s a sad trend of the times, to see the brick and mortar stores of all types, losing business or shutting down entirely.
As with any product, if the market isn’t there to support a business, the end will come.
There is always a large storage locker, the kind with AC and electricity.
LifeWay hasn’t been a “Christian” book store for decades. What they’ve become is shameful.
One time I tried to apply for a job with LifeWay until I saw where you had to agree never to have premarital sex or drink alcohol. I decided that was too over-the-top intrusive. It’s their business and if that’s how they want to run it, fine. I don’t engage in the first and rarely imbibe the second but I wonder if Jesus Himself were the job applicant whether He would agree never to drink wine as a condition of employment.
Rachel Held Evans, Jen Hatmaker, Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald are all either heretical or disqualified to teach. Their collective body of works should not be sold in Christian stores and Lifeway was absolutely correct not to carry them.
There are good things at cph (Concordia publishing house) associated with the LCMS It is online and has a wide variety from kids books to scholarly commentaries by experts in the field
I’d think it fails the WWJD test on the 2nd proviso too, but this is a Baptist interpretation peculiarity.
Anyhow, I wish LifeWay hadn’t tried going with a snappy name when it was clear that it wanted to be Baptist. A LifeWay that was explicitly Baptist would have had the virtue of honesty whatever the virtues or vices of particular minor doctrinal nuances.
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