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A Note From the President

 

I subscribe to a weekly blog entitled Church and Culture by James Emery White (churchandculture.org). Last month James shared some thoughts that I think are worth passing on to you. I have edited his thoughts for length, but trust that his concerns will force us to grapple with what is happening in our congregations as well as our state ministry.

 

"How did Barnes and Noble fall so far so fast?"

 

This was the question asked by James B. Stewart of the Wall Street Journal as the giant bookstore chain put itself up for sale this month.

 

Simple answer? The Internet. More to the point, the internet of amazon.com, kindle, the iPad, e-readers and digital books.

 

But here’s the real question insightfully raised by Stewart: with such market-share dominance in the book business, why didn’t Barnes and Noble, with dominant market position, do what it should have done? As Stewart observes, it could have “out-Amazoned Amazon, leveraging its brand and innovating when it began marketing and selling books online.” After all, Barnes and Noble was an innovation itself, putting many independent booksellers out of business with its deep discounts and in-store coffee bars.

 

Stewart’s conclusion: Barnes and Noble never really embraced the internet or e-books. In truth, it stayed tied to the old-fashioned world of physical books and stores. It was unwilling to destroy its old business model, so it simply focused on managing its decline, leaving Amazon to concentrate on the new world it was creating.

 

A similar story is happening with USA Today. As Jeremy W. Peters of the New York Times notes, "The history of USA Today is full of firsts for the newspaper business: the first generalinterest national paper of its kind, the first to use color widely in charts and photographs, and once first in the number of copies printed each day."

 

Now? Its advertising revenue has collapsed and its circulation has plunged. But unlike Barnes and Noble, USA Today is fighting back. It recently announced the most extensive reorganization in its 28-year history, shifting "its business model away from the print edition that has become ubiquitous in airports, hotels and newsstands across the country."

 

Now the paper will focus on its digital operations, breaking news on its website, a stand-alone sports edition called USA Today Sports, and making content more available in digital form in order to snag a larger percentage of the tablet and mobile phone news market. There are lessons here for all businesses. There are also lessons here for all churches.

 

First lesson: You can go the way of B&N and simply manage your decline, or you can go the way of USA Today and preserve your core while attempting to stimulate progress.

 

What is the core of the church that must never change? The message of the Gospel; a defined new community in Christ; worship and the sacraments; the Great Commission, and the cultural commission inherent within it. What must change? Methods, strategies and forms of communication. USA Today is not in the newspaper business. It’s in the news business. They are realizing that this means they don’t have to live, and eventually die, with the newspaper.

 

Similarly, the church is not in the business of the hymns of Fanny Crosby, age-graded adult Sunday School, door-to-door leaflet campaigns or the King James Version of the Bible. We are in the business of worship, community/ discipleship, evangelism and the Bible itself. But there’s another, more subtle lesson to be learned. Both Barnes & Noble and USA Today were recent innovators. Very recent—like 90’s recent.

 

And now? Struggling to stay current. That’s how fast things are changing. All to say, never before has there been such a need for leaders to be like the men of Issachar, who "understood the signs of the times and knew the best course for Israel to take" (I Chronicles 12:32, NLT). Or perhaps we should say, keep understanding the times. —James Emery White

 

Blessings
Tom Newell