Helping parents protect and nurture their children presents an opportunity for Christian stores to set themselves apart from the increasing competition they face, owners and managers were told at The Gathering 2010. More than ever, with unwholesome trends in entertainment content for the young, "parents are going to look to you to fulfill your traditional role as gatekeeper to their children," author and children's market expert Mary Manz Simon said in her keynote presentation on trends in the category. That is "especially true for the themes in teen fiction," she said, noting "depressing, dark, melancholy are common denominators there." Sketching how technology is changing consumer attitudes and publisher offerings, Simon said that it was increasingly important that stores highlighted to customers how they were helping build strong families.

That meant embracing social media, she added: "We live in a time when news no longer breaks, it tweets. In how many ways do you connect with your customers?"

Simon closed by encouraging attendees that "your service has never been more important. You are called to share God's timeless message with a changing world."                        zzzzzzzzz Mary Manz Simon

Her presentation was the last of more than a dozen educational sessions at the April 21-23 event that drew around 300 bookstore representatives and suppliers to Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky.

In addition, the program included lunchtime discussions on e-books and bargain books, inspirational messages, more than nine hours of exhibition time for 90-plus exhibitors and an autograph party with 29 authors and artists. Among the participants was novelist Liz Curtis Higgs, who lives in the area, also spoke to the group about pursuing excellence in their work.

The event was "excellent" for Dennis Woods, bookstore manager at Water's Edge Resource Center at Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, Texas. "It is the only one I attend," he said. "I look forward to it each year."
Dottie Poythress, manager of The Bookmark at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., said she had found "some new things I would not have seen if I had not been here." There was "a great spirit, a real sense of enthusiasm and excitement" at the event, she said.

Dave Condiff, publisher of Christian Retailing and The Church Bookstore magazines, which hosted the event, said: "It was evident from the comments made by both our attendees and our vendors that this year's event was special and that God's presence was evident throughout. ... One of many highlights was to see and hear how stores responded to the mix of vendors we had on site and to hear that sales were strong with many of the companies on the exhibit floor."

Reflections - Stores Reflect on the Value of The Gathering

Representatives of church, independent and chain stores convening at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky.,  saw great value in being at The Gathering 2010, but they attended for different reasons.

Kris Jodon, manager of a 700-square-foot store at Chapelwood United Methodist Church in Houston, sees the Christian Retailing event as a learning opportunity. "I'm here to continue to learn how to manage the bookstore," she said. "I'm interested in Bookstore Manager software, things that will make managing the store easier, and I love networking with other people so that I have contacts I can call afterward. And I chose The Gathering because it is small, basically, because I've not been to anything else."

Peggy Womer of Destiny World Outreach Center in Killeen, Texas, also benefits from the training. Aside from coming to get "new ideas, to keep our bookstore fresh," she has "walked away with a tremendous amount of knowledge, and we take it back and we put it to work," Womer said.

Tarneice Mines

Tarneice Mines, manager of Glad Tidings Bookstore at Reid Temple in Glenn Dale, Md., has been coming to The Gathering for three years. With her church and bookstore expanding to two locations, Mines brought along three others and came for ideas as well as products to stock the new location. "We get amazing discounts on the products," she said.

Shannon Lang of Church of the King, Mandeville, La., is aiming to learn how to run her bookstore more efficiently and "also to meet different people and see what they're doing in their places and to find out what's new in the product area."

Rose Seeley, manager of Cottonwood Bookstore at Cottonwood Church in Orange

Rose Seeley

County, Calif., has attended the event for three years. She said she enjoys meeting other church bookstore managers. "Developing the relationships has been invaluable to me as I've grown over the years and just grown in my position," she said.

Christian retailers dismayed by the rise in popularity of e-books were given reasons to find some hope in the trend, in the first Food-for-Thought presentation on key industry issues at The Gathering 2010.

They heard that the Symtio program launched by Zondervan in 2008 to give stores a toehold in the digital world has turned out to have an unexpected bonus--a boost in audiobook sales.

Joe Questel, vice president of business development for Symtio, told how the service, selling in-store cards that give people codes to download content for reading or listening, was helping meet the "pent-up demand" for audio editions of books that had previously not taken off in the Christian market the way they had in the general market.

That had been in part because of the price differential, with audio volumes costing as much as $15 more than the print version which, in turn, had discouraged Christian publishers from releasing other books than their major titles in audio.

Susan Chipman, manager of the resource center at Granger Community Church in Granger, Ind., and Jeff Baker, manager of the Vineyard Columbus Bookstore in Columbus, Ohio, both told how they had introduced Symtio in their stores and sold more audiobooks than e-books to date. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Susan Chipman

Questel said that research had found that audio book users went through an average of 16 titles a year, while readers averaged only five, he said. In addition, it had been found that 59% of Kindle owners were age 40 to 70, the main demographic of Christian store shoppers, he added.

Digital publishing was "not a 20- or 30-something phenomenon," he said. "These are people that have disposable income."

Reflections - CBA Chair-Elect George Thomsen

CBA Chair-elect George Thomsen proposed an industry summit to help build up Christian retail, when asked about his hopes for the future, during an informal question-and-answer forum at The Gathering 2010.

"I would really love to see us work together," he said. "I'd like to see us tear down barriers, whatever barriers there are, let us rip them down because it is not Christlike," Thomsen said. "And we need to work together; we need to love each other, as brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to operate with integrity; we need to not be mean with each other as we sometimes are."

Having detailed recent changes at CBA, including the appointment of Curtis Riskey as executive director and the sale of the organization's Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters in a cost-cutting move, Thomsen said: "I think we need to get together as an industry and talk and perhaps even have an industry summit where we bring publishers together, where we bring associations together ... different entities, people who have a stake in this game."

Thomsen, the manager of church-based The Harvest Store in Riverside, Calif., who takes over the chairmanship in October, said he could not fault publishers pursuing other sales channels.

George Thomsen

"Quite honestly if somebody gave me a job in a publishing house I would want to do the same thing; but at the same time we need to recognize that there is a uniqueness and a unique value that Christian retail has and there is a benefit to community, there is spiritual capital that is lost if Christian retail disappears in communities," Thomsen said.

"And that is worth preserving, so we have got to find ways to preserve and to grow and to enrich Christian retail and keep the importance of Christian retail in the mind of consumers."

Organized by Christian Retailing magazine, The Gathering opened with a prayer focus during which attendees were encouraged to pray for each other's personal and business needs and challenges.

The three-day program included an exhibition floor, author and artist autograph party, and the announcement of the winners of Christian Retailing's 2010 Retailers Choice Awards in more than 30 categories.

Geni Hulsey

President of The Church Bookstore Network

Rick Jones

Bellevue Church - Memphis, TN