A message from Geni Hulsey, president of the Church Bookstore Network:

How many times have you heard someone say, "It all depends on your perspective"? I saw a commercial on television recently that caused me to think about perspective and how much it can affect how we react/respond to a given situation.

The commercial was for Office Depot. It opened showing a small, independent barber shop where the owner was staring across the street to where a chain that offered $6 haircuts was opening a very large store.

Knowing he could not compete with those prices, the man went off to Office Depot to have a sign printed. Next we saw him hanging a sign saying, "We fix $6 haircuts." The last scene showed a "for sale" sign on the building previously occupied by the chain store.

Don't you love that? It's all in your perspective. The independent barber could have lowered his prices, offered a two-for-one special or just closed up and gone home. But he knew he had a good thing, a better product than was offered across the street, and he provided a listening ear and remembered your name when you walked into the shop, adding value.

The apostle Paul has a really good lesson on perspective, too. In Acts 16 he and Silas were tossed into the local prison, hands and feet shackled. Verse 25 tells us that "about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them" (NIV). The earth began to quake, and the chains holding the prisoners were loosed and the doors flew open. The jailer panicked and was about to commit hari-kari when Paul proclaimed, "Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"

Once again, it was all a matter of perspective. Paul's was that nothing happened in his life outside of God's providenceso he began to sing and pray to the God whom he knew so intimately. To Paul, suffering was just a part of the package. Why wouldn't he sing and pray now? God was still in charge.

And just as though he had gone to Office Depot and posted a sign reading, "Evangelistic meeting here tonight," the men in prison with him began to listen. After the earth shook for a few minutes and Paul and the others stayed, the guard was amazed and asked how he could be saved. Later he and his family were baptized.

The next day Paul and Silas left the prison and the city on their terms, not those of the governing officials—all a matter of perspective.

And so it is with the state of our industry. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift such as has never been experienced. We can either try to play the same game those who would try to drive us away are playing or go buy a sign that says, "We will fix what the others have broken!"

We know the customers' names, and we will know the product they need or want. These things will never change. We may have to change the way our store looks, the way we have bought for years, even buy into some technology that takes us out of our comfort zone. We may have to learn to use Twitter and Facebook. But our perspective must be a positive one—one that says we are valuable and have something to offer that a general market retailer does not.

We not only know our products, we know the One who inspires the products we sell. One of the great things about The Gathering each year is that we are able to get together with several hundred of our fellow bookstore managers and workers and adjust or broaden our perspective on what we do.

Sometimes when the only perspective we see is our own, we miss something new and wonderful that God has for us. Had Paul never gone to jail, he would not have had the joy of seeing the jailer's family saved nor the hand of God shaking the foundations.

Coming together once a year allows us to see God's hand at work in our industry around the country. It gives us a whole new perspective. Don't miss the opportunity to discover that with us at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., April 21-23, for The Gathering 2010.