Suppliers discuss the niche category of group study materials and how retailers can make the most of it

While Christian Living and fiction titles appear widely on the shelves of general market retailers, curriculum remains more of a specialty category with which Christian stores can set themselves apart—and build important relationships with local churches.

As DVD-based small group study materials gain in  popularity, broadening the choices in curriculum resources, Christian Retailing spoke with representatives of three leading suppliers about trends and opportunities.

Taking part in the discussion were:

• Larry Carpenter, until recently president of Standard Publishing

• John  Raymond, vice president and publisher of church engagement, Zondervan

• Amy Reuscher, product manager for Group Publishing

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What does the growth in curriculum say about the church and the way people learn and are involved in church life?

AMY REUSCHER: I think the growth can be attributed to several factors.

One is that people are learning in such various ways, and small groups provide the flexibility and intimacy that a lot of times people are not seeing in the dated curriculum. A lot of churches and individual groups are moving away from the dated curriculum and moving towards small groups.

I think it also shows a shift in culture with a lot of the non-churched and “de-churched” people forming their own small groups outside of the traditional church setting.

JOHN RAYMOND: A couple of other things have probably encouraged that.

As the megachurch movement has been growing in the last couple of decades, they have discovered that while they are getting bigger, they also need to get smaller. And because they are not small churches anymore, they needed to figure out a way to connect their people.

Also, when the 40 Days of Purpose campaign out of Saddleback Church came into play with The Purpose-Driven Life, of course, Rick Warren encouraged everybody in their churches to form these small groups for at least six weeks. That was another little catalyst.

LARRY CARPENTER: A second thing that we noted is the need for more entertainment value. Today’s generation is raised more on video games and instant gratification. ... They need more stimulus than just, “Today we are going to talk about the book of Acts.”

The third thing is what the Barna Group noted in its research, that the fastest-single-growing element of the church is the home churches. As people are sort of getting away from the four-wall, brick-and-mortar church and just worshiping in people’s homes, they need some sort of curriculum to use, and the large dated curriculum programs don’t work so well in that environment.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: How is curriculum different to, say, 20 years ago?

RAYMOND: One of the biggest shifts is the change from just the old, print study Bible guides where you would open it up and read through the Bible and have some questions and you would all sit around in a group and answer. We have seen an explosion in this decade of video curriculum.

That can come through many forms, but a lot of it is author-based. A lot of groups or even Sunday school classes are inviting authors into their group or into their classroom via video. Partly that is because of a new generation of people who like to watch rather than read.

REUSCHER: Another thing people are looking for is shorter studies and studies that have less prep. As people just get busier and busier, they are not wanting to spend a lot of time outside of their small group setting to prepare or follow up on what they have learned.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Isn’t there a danger of dumbing things down?

CARPENTER: There is a chance of that happening, but if a company is careful, it can introduce something that has entertainment value that still has a strong biblical message linked to it. One of the products over the last 20 years that was really a breakthrough product was the Andy Griffith television show Bible study.

Of course, that was not a Christian program, but what (author) Steve Skelton did was pull out clips that  had strong moral stories. You would actually watch an episode of the Andy Griffith show for half an hour and then he had a discussion guide for the next half hour.

RAYMOND: Using television shows and/or movies is a bit tricky because, what was kind of the primary use for that in the first place? When I think of entertainment, I look at it from a different perspective—what we want is tremendous content, but we do it in a little different way, like on location. In other words, if an author or a speaker is going to tell story connected to the content they are delivering, could we put them in the environment where that story actually happened?

The other thing that we found is letting people tell their real stories. We have incorporated testimonies from people that coincide with the speakers’ theme ... a real-life story much like something that would appear on 20/20 or Nightline.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What goes into developing small group curriculum?

RAYMOND: We’re finding that for small groups, we need to keep our curriculum between four and six weeks—most of it is six—and that the length of time that people want to watch video can vary from about 12 minutes to up to 25 minutes. Those are factors in how we create it.

The bigger thing that we look at is, where are we pulling our curriculum from? Whenever we have a best-selling book of any sort, we can almost count on the curriculum being successful because there are people who will automatically encourage others to be part of it.

Another factor is related to churches or organizations that are larger and that have developed their own curriculum—they field-tested it in their environment and now they want to take it to the mass population, and we found good success in working with some of our partners in developing curriculum that way, too.

CARPENTER: It’s tricky when you deal with dated curriculum as well as small group. For small groups, one of our main guiding principles is universality ... a topic that everyone is going to want to talk about for the next four to six weeks. Thematic is also very important—if you can tie it in with something that is happening in pop culture at that point in time or with some other element of the church.

For example, one of our best-selling small group study guides each year is one that ties in with our Vacation Bible School.

RAYMOND: When you are basing it on a book, you have to figure out the timing. One way is a churchwide campaign—when the book launches, provide sermons to a pastor, the book for everybody to read and then a curriculum for every group to use.

On the other hand, when a book does well, it can have a life of its own for a year or two years or even beyond that, and then a curriculum can be created and still be successful.

Amazingly, when we put Jim Cymbala’s book Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, we didn’t do a curriculum until about seven years down the road. But we made it on the theme of prayer and because that is a passion for Jim Cymbala, there was actually an audience that was wanting a video experience on prayer.

We didn’t even title it after any best-selling book, we just called it When God’s People Pray, and that has been one of our best-selling curricula for the past three or four years.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What are the opportunities for stores with curriculum?

REUSCHER: A lot of repeat business, because when they are doing two, three, four, five different small group settings a year, they are definitely coming back into the store a lot, and that gives the retailers other opportunities to sell other products to them as well as their small group product.

Another opportunity they have is to try to connect to the church in a larger way—build a relationship not only with the small group pastors, but also small group leaders and members who are coming in, but then try to build that stronger relationship overall with other areas of the church those people are involved in.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: Are stores making the most of such opportunities?

CARPENTER: All the stores need a little help in figuring out how to sell these. There is a fundamental difference in the way that dated curriculum is bought and what we refer to as unstructured curriculum, for small groups.

Dated curriculum is pretty easy. Every church has a Sunday school director or a pastor in charge of education whose job it is to figure out what the more structured classes are going to be for the next quarter or semester.

The undated, unstructured small group-type things are much more free flowing—(the members) tend to turn to that small group leader and ask them to pick out what to study for the next six weeks. What does that small group person do? They want to go out to a Christian retail store and browse through that section.

So, frankly, the design of the product, the cover images, become more important because it’s more than likely more of an impulse purchase than a Sunday school director picking something out of a catalog. That is an opportunity for the store to have a well-marked, well-organized section where those small group leaders can browse.

RAYMOND: I think the church is the secret to retailers’ success, if they would build the relationships.

They have to get to know who are these key people and have somebody in the store who could really help small group leaders when they walk in and look at the options. That is going to require that a store have good samples of what’s available.

One of the ways that they can do that is to utilize a video player or a computer to actually let people experience some of these curricula. At Zondervan, we provide DVD samplers to bookstores so they can actually see what it would be like to actually go through a session.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What about merchandising?

RAYMOND: We have gotten feedback from our sales reps that over the years a lot of people have had these Lucite displays on their shelves where they can actually slide in Bible study guides or any kind of curriculum. We found that those can work just as well for a video and a participant’s guide as they can for a Bible study thing.

So, instead of stacking everything on a shelf spine out, find things within your store that you could put on the shelves face out, grab people’s attention.

A second possibility to highlight some of the small group curriculum, particularly related to books, would be create author endcaps or resource endcaps where you can highlight an author or a theme.

REUSCHER: We are not a big book publisher, but we have partnered with some other companies—for example, we have done two Tony Dungy Bible studies. So, great—everybody is buying the book, which is in a different section of the store, but then you have the study guide which is spine out only and in the Bible study guide section. It’s very difficult for customers to even know there is a related product, let alone find it.

Try to find a win/win solution ... and that can also go back to relationship building.

One idea an account shared with us was that instead of giving a bulk discount to a small group leader who came in to buy for the entire group, sell those products at regular price, but then give them coupons to pass out to their group members to get them back into the store for the next go round.

RAYMOND: One of the things that stores are going to have to wrestle with is that they are going to possibly have to think about what would it be like to offer discounts more aggressively or more often to small group customers.

The brick-and-mortar store has to think strategically, how in this world where people can buy anything, anywhere at anytime, can we offer something that will encourage them to come to our store and to encourage them to what we have to offer.

CARPENTER: Hand-selling at the retail level is probably more important in the small group curriculum section than any other. Why? People, when they are buying for themselves, the only person they have to please is themselves. But with a small group, you are buying for five, 10, 15, 20 other people, and so making sure that you get it right is more important.

So having a well-trained staff that knows what is in each, it’s more important for them to be knowledgeable on that area (more) than perhaps any other section in the store with the possible exception of Bibles.

CHRISTIAN RETAILING: What about new resources?

CARPENTER: It’s Your Move is based on board games—we have gone back and picked out all the great board games from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Then we have a second series, Through Artists’ Eyes, and it’s three books—God’s Word on Canvas, God’s Word on Glass and God’s Word in Stone. And this is for people who are perhaps a little bit more intellectually oriented than the ones who play Monopoly. It picks beautiful works of art, then ties it in (to the Bible).

REUSCHER: Growing Out: From Disciples to Disciplers is a six-book series that is a guided path to spiritual maturity. It takes people through growing in Jesus, growing in character, growing in their gifts and then up into growing in leadership.

Then we have Make Your Group Grow, and this is to get groups growing both numerically and spiritually. The author, Josh Hunt, did surveys of several small group leaders and pastors that he has been working with churches across the country ... talking about how to get your group growing.

RAYMOND: The big ones this year are Prodigal God by Tim Keller, which has done extremely well, and The Me I Want to Be, a new book, a video curriculum from John Ortberg.

In the summer we’ll be launching a similar kind of thing with the brand new book and video curriculum from Bill Hybels, called The Power of a Whisper.

Read excerpts here and listen in on the whole conversation at roundtable.christianretailing.com.

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