Few retail stores ever get dozens of people suddenly flooding in at the same time—let alone several hundred. But many church bookstores see huge crowds cramming into their little spaces with surprising regularity, between or after services. How are you to deal with this?

During the week, your days probably involve waiting on one customer at a time and quiet periods of restocking the shelves and ordering more product. But during deluge times, everyone needs to grab a bucket.

Man your registers with your fastest volunteers. Have staff available to answer questions, and use stanchions to help form lines at the checkout. This is especially useful if you can get the line to move out of the store-leaving more room for those still making their selections. Have a volunteer guide customers to the checkout line and help encourage conversations within the line.

Having customers wait in a long line isn't always a bad thing. No lines can mean that people aren't buying. When your pastor begins to worry as your store line extends into the church lobby, remind him that his words inspire action and that life-changing resources are getting into people's hands.

Helping hurting customers can be one of the most difficult tasks during deluge times. What do you do when you have a customer who is at your church for the first time and is now crying in the grief section of your store?

If you feel led, take this person out of the crowd, and spend 20 minutes to an hour with them.
Another way to handle this situation is to take the customer to another church leader or member. Other leaders in your church may have gifts of mercy and discernment beyond yours.

With a little planning and a lot of deep breaths, you can survive the deluge.

-Cynthia Hoppe, a freelance writer, managed the Seeds Resource Center at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., for six years.

-Click here to read the complete article: http://www.thechurchbookstore.com/a.php?ArticleID=13022.

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