It's OK to admit it. Each of us has been in a checkout line in the grocery store, glanced at the array of mints, candies and nail clippers next to us and bought something we had no intention of purchasing when we came into the store.

Those impulse sales are important enough to grocery stores that they allocate space for them right in high-traffic areas, easily within reach of customers, and positioned to allow a touch-and-take impulse purchase. Impulse sales should be that important to your store as well.

There are two kinds of impulse purchases. First is the "out-of-the-blue" purchase. Your customer had no intention of buying anything at all in that category. But—when she saw it, she liked it.

The second kind of impulse sale is the "something-but-I-don't-know-what" purchase. The customer comes into the store for a primary purchase such as a book, CD or significant gift purchase. But, in the back of her mind, she is also thinking that if just the right "little something" appealed to her, she would pick it up for the women in her Sunday school class or for a neighbor or co-worker.

GRAMMY-nominated artist Chris Tomlin has won multiple Dove Awards, and has gold and platinum records to his credit. Time magazine has called him "the most often sung artist anywhere."

He talked with Christian Retailing about new release And If Our God Is for Us..., from sixstepsrecords/Sparrow Records (EMI CMG Distribution). 

You recorded in your new cabin studio for the first time. What was that like?

Every record I've done has been in Nashville, so this has been really nice to be just down the road from my house, and it just created an atmosphere that all of us were like, this is the best experience we have ever had recording, I think just because we were at home and there was no clock that was ticking, it was just like, let's see what happens and record. It's just been so awesome. 

Author Mark Labberton calls readers to get their hearts right in order to actively respond to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" in The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus (978-0-830-83840-0, $20, hardcover), releasing this month from IVP Books/InterVarsity Press.

Following his 2007 The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice, Labberton's most recent "dangerous" installment challenges readers to reflect on why the heart can become complacent about the world and its needs. 

Labberton—formerly a Presbyterian minister and now a senior fellow of the International Justice Mission, Lloyd John Ogilvie chair for preaching and director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute for Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary—encourages readers to first see rightly, the beginning of how our hearts are changed.

Considering how to follow Christ in 'the mundane, concrete and routine'

Best-selling author Scot McKnight, professor of religious studies at Chicago's North Park University, issues a discipleship challenge, aiming to reveal what it means to truly follow Jesus, in One.Life: Jesus Calls. We Follow. 

Raised in a Christian home, McKnight accepted Christ at age 6, but in his teen years he began to grapple in a deeper way with what it actually meant to be a believer.

"I moved from understanding a Christian as someone who accepts Christ into their heart to someone who surrenders themselves to Christ in trust and obedience, so that a Christian, for me, is not someone simply who has accepted Christ but someone who, as the result of accepting Christ, follows Christ," he said.

"That transformed my life when I was 17 years old and through my seminary-study days, when I realized that being a Christian was a revolutionary decision and lifestyle that would impact everything I did."

McKnight, who addressed the topic of love in The Jesus Creed, goes on to examine what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a multitude of ways, offering up topics from justice to sex to vocation to eternity. 

Latest project: Health Care You Can Live With (Barbour Publishing).

Tell us about the Church Health Center you started in Memphis. "We began in 1987. We provide health care for people who work in low-wage jobs who don't have health insurance. We take care of the people who work to make our lives comfortable. They shine your shoes, cook your food and one day dig your grave, and they don't complain, yet when they get sick, their options are very few. We currently care for over 70,000 people. We're not a federally funded anything. We are totally supported by people of faith. The reason why we do what we do is that the call to discipleship is to do three things: to preach, to teach and to heal. In our churches, we got the preach and the teach down, but what does it mean to have a healing ministry? That's what the Church Health Center is all about, and we do it in three ways: medically, which is a traditional clinic which cares for people from the cradle to the grave; wellness, (which is) all about keeping people healthy, and finally outreach, which is engaging churches to help churches understand in today's world what a healing ministry looks like."

Having made his name as a mythological hero, Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) changes direction to help people separate make-believe from reality in presenting The 12 Biggest Lies (7-45638-05585-4, $19.98), released last month.

Made by Cloud Ten Pictures, the documentary tackles what Producer-Director André van Heerden called a dozen of the most controversial commonly held beliefs relating to faith and society, challenging them with an alternate view.