Opportunities broaden for charismatic book sales

Four years after celebrations to mark the centennial of the modern Pentecostal movement that has profoundly reshaped the church, its leaders are more concerned about looking forward than back.

While 2006 saw a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, international gatherings in the U.S. and Sweden this year look ahead to the challenges and opportunities facing the Spirit-filled community.

At the same time publishers serving the movement—which marks its own ruby anniversary this year—have been assessing their changing part and place, in conversation with Christian Retailing.

Several thousand attendees were expected April 8-10 at Empowered 21: Global Congress on Holy Spirit Empowerment in the 21st Century.

Central to the gathering were to be discussions on finding ways for “engaging new generations in Spirit-empowered living,” organizers said.

The event was to take place at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., whose founder died last December, aged 91. One of the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century, Roberts had a significant role in charismatic publishing, writing more than 130 books.

Participation in Empowered 21 reads like a who’s who of the contemporary Christian products world. The event’s leadership cabinet included authors such as Lisa Bevere, Jack Hayford, Mark Rutland, Vinson Synan and Samuel Rodriguez. Other members included worship music pioneer Michael Coleman, president of Integrity Media, and Mart Green, founder and president of the Mardel Christian and Education retail chain.

Among the keynote speakers and presenters were authors Kim Daniels, Dick Eastman, Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, Jentezen Franklin, David Shibley, artist Ron DiCianni and musicians Paul Baloche and Marcos Witt.

Meanwhile, Australian pastor and author Brian Houston—whose Hillsong Church in Sydney is home to the hugely influential Hillsong worship sound—is due to be one of the keynote speakers at the 22nd Pentecostal World Conference to be held in Stockholm, Sweden, Aug. 24-27.

The event is set to echo a concern of the Tulsa congress. “My passion for the Pentecostal movement is that we are prepared and ready to empower future generations,” said Houston. “While we honor the past, we want to live for today and build for tomorrow.”

Joining him in Stockholm will be other well-known authors including Hayford and evangelist Reinhard Bonnke.

BEYOND ‘SPECIAL INTEREST’

But as church leaders pray and plan, anyone setting out to assess the significance and impact of the Pentecostal movement and its charismatic offspring on Christian publishing would miss the point if they scanned only the special-interest category shelves where such titles have traditionally been placed in bookstores.

For while the space and prominence given to the section has expanded in most stores since Dennis Bennett’s groundbreaking Nine O’Clock in the Morning was first published in 1970 by Bridge-Logos, authors from the movement are increasingly found in other categories, too, as Spirit-focused publishers have also enlarged their territories.

Leading charismatic and Pentecostal authors like T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer and John Hagee regularly write on topics beyond core issues of the Spirit-filled life. Bridge-Logos Foundation and Whitaker House publish classics on holiness, while Strang Book Group’s Siloam dominates the Christian health and wellness area.

The three publishing houses were born out of the charismatic movement of the 1960s and 1970s which they and others agree has been largely mainstreamed since the early days when books about the Spirit-filled life were rejected by some stores.

“There seems to have been a blending of certain aspects of the charismatic movement into other denominations or parts of the church,” observed Rolf Zettersten, vice president and publisher at Hachette Group USA’s Christian imprint, FaithWords.

That view is born out by a 2008 report by the Barna Group that found significant Pentecostal and charismatic growth in the previous decade. Americans who identified themselves as such had increased in 10 years from 30% to 36%—or around 80 million adults—according to the study, while one in four Protestant churches was charismatic.

Charismatic- and Pentecostal-style congregations feature heavily in the annual list of largest American churches compiled by Outreach magazine, with Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, ranking No. 1 for 2009.

The growth is not limited to independent churches like Osteen’s. The U.S. Assemblies of God (AG) reported membership gains for the ninth successive year in 2009, overtaking the Presbyterian Church (USA) to become the ninth largest denomination in the country.

The AG’s rise was reported in the National Council of Churches’ 2010 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, whose editor, Eileen W. Lindner, noted: “American church membership trends have defied gravity, particularly when the Pentecostal experience is included.”

That greater openness to charismatic belief and practice has meant that “the lines have continued to blur” in publishing, said Zettersten. These days, “a lot of charismatic authors don’t want to be identified as being ‘charismatic’ authors because they say that is restricting them to a smaller audience,” he added.

At retail, Zettersten observed, “charismatic books aren’t considered special interest any more, they are part of the Christian Living category. They really have gone mainstream as far as the booksellers are concerned.”

As a result, sales data does not tell the whole story. “Many authors who historically might have been categorized in ‘Charismatic’ are now finding their titles in ‘Christian Life,’ ‘Inspirational’,” said said Michael Covington, information and education director for the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).

A BROADER AUDIENCE

The mainstreaming has meant some adapting. At Regal Books, “we work with the author to state things in a way that would be broadly acceptable to the reading audience,” said President Bill Greig III. “We work with them to use language that is more widely acceptable; we would use biblical language, quite frankly.”

As the trade book division of historic curriculum publisher Gospel Light, Regal took some heat when it “kind of fell into” publishing books by the likes of C. Peter Wagner and Neil T. Anderson in the 1990s. “We had retailers and distributors saying, ‘Are you turning charismatic?’ and my answer was always, ‘No, we are are for the whole church; we want to publish great books,’” Greig said.

Despite the mainstreaming, publishers agreed that there is still a place for a specific category for some charismatic titles. “There are ways to communicate certain subjects in a broader, less ghetto-izing or arcane way,” said Jane Campbell, editorial director at Baker Publishing Group’s Chosen Books.

“Other subjects, however, are still more sensitive or a little harder hitting.”

Jonathan Nori, COO at Destiny Image Publishers, noted that “many of today’s ‘charismatics’ were not even around when the movement began and don’t identify themselves as such.” However, that did not mean moving away from issues core to the movement, he added.

“Those ‘core issues’ are where we have found the most success,” he said. “If someone isn’t interested in a book about speaking in tongues, they won’t buy it. But someone interested in that subject? They don’t want a message that’s been watered down to try and make it more ‘palatable’ to those who disagree.”

Some core charismatic titles have found acceptance beyond their expected constituency. John Eckhardt’s 2008 Prayers That Rout Demons has been “embraced across the board,” said Tessie DeVore, vice president of Strang Communications’ Strang Book Group. Along with Prayers that Break Curses, released in January, it has been successful “even in surprising markets like the Catholic one.”

Strang Communications founder and CEO Steve Strang underscored that the charismatic movement—for which he launched Charisma magazine in 1975—has produced a market hungry for more than just “real narrow, special-interest books.”

Strang, whose company also publishes Christian Retailing magazine, said: “The Spirit-filled community has affected the church in lots of ways. It has encouraged Christians to pursue greater intimacy with Jesus, closer study of the Word and believing it, quite literally. There has been standing for biblical values, worship and prayer and the presence of God—all these areas have been heavily influenced by the charismatic movement.”

Whitaker House Vice President Bob Whitaker Jr. also noted how the charismatic movement has had an indirect spillover impact in publishing.

“What I find interesting in the bookselling world is that charismatic readers are much more apt to pick up another author, even knowing that they might have a bias against the gifts of the Spirit,” he said, “whereas a more fundamentalist reader wouldn’t even think about picking up a book by a known charismatic, even if it is not on that subject.”

With a new generation of charismatics and Pentecostals emerging, backlist titles that address foundational truths of the movement remain strong. Meyer’s Battlefield of the Mind, first published in 1995, was the top-selling charismatic title of 2009 according to the ECPA’s PubTrack Christian sales charts. A sequel, Power Thoughts, is due from FaithWords later this year.

Meyer was also last year’s top-selling charismatic PubTrack Christian author, just ahead of Joel Osteen. But in third place was Smith Wigglesworth, the British Pentecostal pioneer who died in 1947, while at No. 8 on the list was Kenneth E. Hagin, who died in 2003.

Faith Library Publications (FLP), which Hagin founded, is different from most other charismatic publishers in not having diversified beyond its core audience. “We believe that there are still people out there in all markets that need to hear the word of faith taught, so our goal is to get it out to as many people as possible,” said Brian Cumberland, FLP manager.

In the final quarter of 2009, for the first time “after years of trying,” the publisher had four titles accepted by Barnes & Noble. A book signing in Tulsa—FLP’s home—for a title by Hagin’s son, Kenneth W. Hagin, saw more than 400 sales.

CHANGING EMPHASES

Topics and trends have changed through the years. In the early days there was an emphasis on first-person narratives like Bennett’s Nine O’Clock in the Morning (Bridge-Logos), Pat Boone’s A New Song (Creation House) and Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place (Chosen).

As the market became “glutted” with such accounts, the company and others “found a much more receptive market for expositional ‘teaching’ books,” Chosen’s Campbell noted. Prayer and spiritual warfare were a major focus, followed by prophecy and dreams.

More recently, Chosen has returned to releasing two or three first-person “memoir” books a year, “having a great time with them and enjoying hearing how they are connecting with readers,” Campbell said.

Early works are finding a new audience, too; Bridge-Logos sold 18,000 copies of Nine O’Clock in the Morning last year.

In addition to the greater openness of stores to Pentecostal and charismatic belief, Zettersten said that he saw another factor at play in stores’ embracing the movement and its authors. “There is an economic reality that if you are going to sell Christian books, you can’t ignore one of the largest categories in that market,” he said.

“Given how hard it is for booksellers these days, particularly the independents, I think they take a look at these authors and realize there’s nothing in there that’s offensive and they won’t jeopardize anyone’s faith because they sell those books.”

At Destiny Image, Nori observed that “most bookstores have recognized that those who are ‘hungry’ and identify with the ‘charismatic movement’ make excellent repeat customers.”

Pentecostal and charismatic authors are driving a significant part of many publishers’ international growth. Destiny Image and Whitaker House had two of the largest display booths at Marketsquare International, the winter event for overseas buyers held in Atlanta in January.

“Our sales have remained strong, particularly internationally—that’s where the church growth is,” Whitaker said. Destiny Image also saw “a growing demand for charismatic titles internationally, both in English and translations, Nori said.

FLP’s Cumberland predicted continued growth across all markets. “I have always thought that the charismatic movement was just a return to things that were certainly occurring in the book of Acts,” he said. “I don’t see that is supposed to stop or it has.”

Whitaker agreed: “The truth continues to sell. You really can’t change God’s Word, but you can try to present it in a fresh way.”

Top 10 publishers’ Pentecostal and charismatic market share, 2009

Strang Book

Group 22%

Destiny Image Publishers 16%

Whitaker House 16%

Harrison House Pu

blishers 10%

FaithWords 9%

Simon & Schuster 8%

Baker Publishing Group 5%

Faith Library Publications

3%

Gospel Light Publications 2%

Thomas Nelson 2%

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