CBA Industry Blog

Be the change - no matter the sacrifice

I try not to watch TV too much. It’s bad for my health and the hours I spend glued to it are nonrefundable. Last night though for whatever reason I flipped on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Before I knew it, my cheeks were blackened from my running mascara. (Trust me… I feel like an even bigger nerd for admitting that to all of you.)

In last night’s episode, the Martinez family received not only a new home for the six of them, but also a new community center and a second home to help others start a new life. The Martinezes purposely moved into a crime-ridden neighborhood in Albuquerque with the dream of ministering to the people and really changing a community. As I watched this story of one family’s radical commitment to do all they can to better a miniscule corner of the world, I was struck with pride – absolute beaming pride – in their hearts, in their clear communication of their mission, and in how they have been humbly glorifying God day after difficult day. Here on my TV were brothers and sisters in Christ truly living the call.

Since moving to their broken community eight years ago, the Martinezes have seen incredible changes in the hearts and lives of their neighbors, as well as in the crime statistics. They still have a lot of work to do, but they are determined to fulfill their calling.

It is often stories like these that inspire me the most. I tend to see the world as being filled with fantastically unending opportunities for betterment, but when complacency kicks in, negativity isn't too far behind.

Wish You Were Here!

CBA Retailers+Resources editor, Carrie Erickson, was in Nashville this week attending GMA. Below are a few of her thoughts on the week and the value of face-to-face connections. Sounds like it was a good week!

You know you’ve had a good GMA week when you sit down to write about it and fall asleep in your chair. Well, that’s one way I know, anyway.

After hardly a free minute the entire time I’ve been in Nashville, I finally finished my interviews and didn’t have an event to rush off to (at least for another hour). The quiet moment when I finally sat down for a quiet two seconds I promptly snoozed into dreamland. Guess the coffee I’ve consumed didn’t overcome late night concerts’ effects.

Now that I’ve come to coherence again, I feel like I’m sending you a virtual postcard. And on it I want to say:  “Wish you were here.”

It’s a new day for retailing - even for the big boys!

A friend of mine is a veteran of several Florida hurricanes. Four big ones hit the Sunshine State in a couple of years¾all affecting him and his household. He was so tired of hurricanes he moved.

To Louisiana.

Just 25 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Right before Katrina.

He evacuated his home and stayed with friends in Alabama for awhile finally returning home -- just in time for Rita. He had to evacuate again, so he went back to Florida to stay with family just as Wilma rolled onto the Florida coast.

“I feel like I’ve got a target on my back!” he told me in frustration.

Buying Local!

There has been a trend as of late for consumers to start shopping locally for products (mainly food items) sourced closer to home. The word “Locavore” was born which means “a person whose primary source of food is his or her local foodshed or from within a relatively modest radius.” Many people across the U.S. are looking to local producers to supply them with products that will also help them to sustain their local economy.

As many of you know, some Christian retailers have been struggling for years. In fact, their struggle is not unlike that of small family farmers in the 1980s. Big corporations moved in and squeezed out the little guy. In the struggle of Christian retailers, the corporations have been the Wal-Marts of the world. They started selling Christian product when it became popular and placed extreme margin pressure on small-business people trying to eke out a living.

The May 2008 Best Sellers List...

... is ready for you to dive into. Check out the Top 10 list below. Viral champion, The Shack, keeps climbing the charts and Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages is clearly running the longest marathon ever. You can view this list in the PDF form, along with other BSLs, on CBA's web site as well.

Happy Reading!

Guest Blogger - Reading the Owner's Manual

Here at CBA, it has always been our hope that this blog would become the blog for the industry. While we’re still working to accomplish this goal (Rome wasn’t built in a day, right?) we’ve decided to give some of the other voices in our industry some platform time too on topics of their choosing.

Right about now though, our legal counsel is probably pulling his hair out, so we have to add the disclaimer that while these guest bloggers are part of CBA - the industry, they do not necessarily always represent the views of CBA - the association.

So that being said, let’s introduce you to our first guest blogger – Karl Tobien. Karl’s a WaterBrook author and he has some interesting insights into not only the film Expelled but how it relates to the freedoms we, as Christians enjoy, particularly here in America. Let us know what you think.

It's been several years - four of them to be exact - since I've been this excited about the news of such an urgently necessary, and mandatory, in fact divinely "appointed" film coming out: "EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed," opening in theaters nationwide this Friday, April 18th!  The last Hollywood project to create this much national controversy and rightful notoriety from our atheist, God-hating, banner-waving buddies on our cultural "left," for essentially the same root cause, was Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  In that historically and culturally unprecedented 2004 film, if you'll recall, "they" also wanted God expelled.

CBA's Response to Thomas Nelson's Departure from ICRS

Yesterday afternoon, Thomas Nelson released the news that the publisher is withdrawing from this summer’s International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, FL (July 13-17). According to Nelson President Mike Hyatt, “We have been discussing this move for some time. But the current economic downturn is forcing us to re-evaluate the expenditure of every marketing dollar. We are committed to doing our best to support our products and distributors with marketing expenditures that result in greater sales. And we have determined that, for Thomas Nelson, these trade shows provide very little return on a very significant investment.”

Just last week, Nelson hosted an all-expenses-paid three-day event in Nashville for the company’s top 100 Christian-retail accounts.

The release concluded with the company announcing it’s considering additional channel management strategies to support its general market accounts. “Our goal is to create relevant plans for each sales channel that will reinforce their business and their relationship with Thomas Nelson,” said Hyatt.

The Down Lo: Livin' in Hyperreality

In years past I remember sitting through sermons in which pastors spoke on the struggle of jealousy when it comes to others’ professions, incomes, and lifestyles. Particularly in my monetarily lean collegiate days I can recall thinking, “Why would I be jealous of another’s career? I’m pretty sure I’ll be happy to simply have a job that pays me on a regular basis with more than just free food.” 

Then the real world sets in, and simply covering my expenses isn’t enough anymore. Sometimes throughout the day I will find myself fixated on self-serving demands: I want to globetrot; I want an iPhone; I want more recognition; I want yet another pair of shoes to add to my already ridiculously enormous collection. There never seems to be enough time or money these days, does there?

I’m reviewing a book right now that you can read about in the June issue of CBA Retailers+Resources so I won’t give away too much of it here, but rather I’d like to pull out a few quotes that haven’t left my thoughts since reading them this past weekend.

“The clear message behind hyperreality is that… we need to imitate the lives we see in movies, in advertising, in lifestyle magazines, in music videos, and on television – then we will be happy.”

“In a hyperreal culture much of our happiness is out of our control because it is tied up in a system of comparison.”

“You can spend all day wishing you had the lifestyle of a Hollywood celebrity, but the fact of the matter is that if you are born in the West, you have won the cosmic lottery.”

“Sure, we want freedom from the oppression of always having to measure up, to live life as a brand, constantly feeling the pressure to be interesting, attractive, and cool. But we cannot imagine what life would be like if we left all of that pressure behind. So we attempt to live as half slave and half free.”

“Jesus is asking them to believe in his way of living, of acting; he is asking them to trust him and get on board with his way of doing things. He is asking the crowd if they trust him enough to model their lives after his.”

How does this relate to you? Well, we can all always use an opportunity to check our hearts, but maybe we need to dig deeper than that. Maybe we – me, you, your customers, the body at large – need to come to the understanding that while growing Christian businesses and ministries may not be on par right now with something like creating the next Google, they do serve a greater purpose. They remind us that it’s okay to not live in the land of hyperreality, but rather in the land of God’s reality.

Music blares from my iPod in another room. Shane & Shane strum out one of their classic tunes. “His mercies are new. His mercies are new every morning. And that is enough for me.” Yes, I should think, that is enough for me.

Expelled Continued...

We were privileged at CBA to preview Ben Stein’s new documentary film Expelled. The film really draws battle lines in a war that goes back to Genesis. Did God create the world or are we just the results of some freak occurrence that began a chain of evolution resulting in humans? Or maybe, as some scientists think, we’re just progeny from alien-planet seeding programs from previously evolved beings.

Spiced with quirky Ben Stein humor, the film shows many qualified physicists and other scientists condemned and shunned from prestigious and profitable academic circles and research grants because their scientific evidence indicates intelligent design undergirds the universe. Now these scientists aren’t necessarily radical Christians and they’re not promoting religious viewpoints. Stein is a Jew, not a Christian. The evidence just supports that the harmonic complexity of the universe couldn’t happen by chance.

Stein parallels the kind of thinking behind the shunning to bizarre mindsets we’ve see in radical, extreme socio-political movements – such as fascism. He wrestles with how easy it is to suppress freedom and liberty in America, a land where these ideals are supposed cornerstones.

When Stein focuses in on crucial questions, seeing agitated Darwinian scientists was really shocking. Those calm, cool, rational exteriors cover a very bizarre kind of mindset that’s more akin to tyranny than academic freedom.

The film opens next week. If it’s not in a theater near you, appeal to the film-masters to schedule a showing. If you get the same resistance as the intelligent-design scientists, consider hosting a public showing with other retailers to ensure your community doesn’t miss this film. It reveals cracks in the science behind Darwinism that many people believe without any personal investigation, and raises critical questions about what’s happening in American universities. Political correctness is just name-calling compared to what Stein has presented.

Lo's Gettin' Expelled!

Earlier this week our friends at Motive Marketing stopped by to preview the film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, for our staff. If you haven’t heard about this movie yet, take a gander at its web site or do a little research on the controversy surrounding this film’s content and release.

However, when it comes to the word ‘controversy’ I think this is where the English language fails us at times. Controversy seems to imply a sense of right and wrong, of one party winning over the other. Expelled doesn’t necessarily take the viewers down a decisive path, but rather, just that, a path. It’s Ben Stein’s journey of understanding the differences between seemingly predominant evolution theories and lesser known, lesser accepted ideas of like intelligent design.

Obviously I’m positively biased in this case for several reasons:

1. I like the guys at Motive. They’re cool.

2. Ben Stein is quite the intellectual giant. Having him as your guide through this documentary is a surprisingly pleasant addition to what could have very easily been a boring film.

3. I’m not the biggest fan of science. In fact, I managed to avoid taking all the traditional science requirements in college by finding "creative" alternatives. Hence my current knowledge random topics like 16th century painting materials. But Expelled uses the medium of film to perhaps its fullest potential – to mobilize viewers to action by showing them a previously un/underexposed issue.

In the film, Ben has this great line that I will inevitably misquote, but the gist of it is this: “I thought Darwinism was it. Aren’t we were all evolutionists now?” The line is said in slight jest and actually acts as a transition into explaining the fact that, no, we’re not all evolutionists now.

A co-worker was anxious to see this film for months, because as she tells me frequently, “This topic fits right in with studies like The Truth Project that our church has been doing. It really is a matter of understanding what a Biblical worldview is and how that impacts our daily life.”

There are so many different ways to approach discussing this movie – and hopefully over the next few weeks we’ll be posting several of those approaches here – but in the meantime I think I’m just going to leave you with this:

Reason #4 why I’m slightly biased and majorly excited – Expelled is controversial in that it opens up a debate; it leaves room for discussion. It isn’t the Passion of Christ; it’s not going to hit viewers over the head with a Biblical principle or draw them into the life of an Old Testament hero, but it does provide lightly drawn lines back to a Biblical worldview. And where do you think might those interested in learning more about a Biblical worldview go to find quality, informative resources and answers that will help them make a decisive decision?

Hmmm….