You don’t find the title “Journalist” in the list of His names that includes Counselor and Prince of Peace, but Jesus would have made a great one.

He knew that the real heart of an issue couldn’t always be caught in stats and graphs, no matter how pretty they were made to look. That’s why He didn’t talk about world evangelism but told a story about the lost sheep.

Elsewhere in this issue we report on trends and studies that offer some encouragement to the Christian retail world, hinting at some bright prospects for the future. I’m jazzed by them, but what really has me pumped up on returning from The Gathering 2010, our own industry event, is not the numbers but the stories.

It’s the likes of Steve, Cathy, Joseph, Beverly, George and Bruce.

Steve is a longtime independent who has been around the block a few times, but is still enthusiastic about making Christian products available. At a time when other small business owners might be thinking about planning for retirement, he was at our event in Louisville, Ky., looking for new ways to differentiate his store and open to kicking around new ideas—like taking on the running of stores for local churches.

Cathy’s infectious, bouncing delight at being at an industry event for the first time could have been attributed to too much caffeine, but for the fact that she doesn’t touch the stuff—though she loves to serve it at the church café she oversees along with a bookstore, with her husband and son, making it a remarkable family ministry.

Joseph is a successful, savvy businessman who visibly choked up when he told how God led him and his wife out of a prosperous winery “into the Lord’s vineyard,” breathing new life into an historic branch of the Christian retail tree.

Then there was Beverly, who runs a church-based store founded to raise money that can be poured back into local missions efforts. She spoke about how she declined to operate a book table at a local event because she didn’t want to be seen to be in competition with the local independent who had been invited to be there, too.

George talked passionately about the need for retailers and suppliers to work together more closely—not ignoring the business realities that make different ones competitors in some regards, but acknowledging the greater truth, by which they are brothers and sisters, too.

It wasn’t just retailers, either. Bruce was there as a first-time author, less concerned about making a name for himself or big bucks than he was passionate about challenging accepted wisdom on truth and science—ready to give away copies of the book he had self-published (with high, full-color quality) to anyone who could help get it into other people’s hands.

I’m not telling you about these folks in the kind of mushy, after-conference glow that thinks everything is going to be just peachy from now on because we have spent a little time together away from the day-to-day grind. I have been around enough to know that mountaintop holy moments soon get tempered by encounters with grumblers, doubters and dissenters back in the valley.

We continue to face some big issues as an industry. And we certainly need to look at the hard facts. We need to apply our best, sharp minds to the challenges.

But we also need to be encouraged that, through the likes of these people and many more, our industry is in good hands—hands which are guided by soft hearts.

So while you are conducting business—in your store, at your office, at the International Christian Retail Show later this month, pay attention to the stats. But look and listen for the stories, too. And share yours, it might encourage someone else.

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