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The Foster Letter —

Religious Market Update

The FOSTER Letter is a bi-weekly e-mail religious market intelligence report targeted to Christian market channel and ministry leaders.  Each issue reports on news, trends, events and research that will directly or indirectly impact your audiences and businesses in a convenient summary format  Better informed leaders make better choices!

Researched, Edited & Published by Gary D. Foster

Excerpts from the

April 25, 2010 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update 

April 25, 2010 

Christian Store Sales Down On average, Christian stores reported a 3.07% net sales decrease in ’09; however, 25% reported sales growth, and nearly 9% reported flat sales, according to the 2010 CBA State of the Industry Report. The study also revealed Christian stores lagged behind all retail during the ‘09 Christmas season with a sales drop of 2.1% vs. a 1.1% rise for U.S. retail overall. Also, slightly fewer stores closed last year (32 vs. 37 in ’08). Church-relations strategies contributed significantly to positive store growth. Among stores hosting at least one pastor’s event in ’09, 43.3% experienced overall sales increases—more than twice the rate of stores with sales increases that didn’t host a pastor’s event (21.2%). Despite a struggling ’09 economy, only 3.2% of respondents plan to close their store in ’10, down from 6.3% in ’08. 82% of responding stores expect ’10 sales to be the same or better than ’09. (CBA 4/9/10) 

Strategy Required A chaotic external world requires internal cohesion and flexibility. To ensure internal flexibility, a strategy must engage every part of the system. Are your strategies in place? Maybe I can help. Call me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com (Strategy for Sustainability, Adam Werbach, Harvard Business Press, 2009)  

Lonely People tend to have higher blood pressure and weaker immune systems. Loneliness may even affect our genes. In lonely people, genes that promote inflammation are more active, while genes that reduce inflammation are less active. John Cacioppo, director of the Univ. of Chicago’s Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, says. “The drive to avoid being alone is as strong as the need to alleviate hunger, thirst, and pain.” (USA Today 4-8-10) 

Friendliness and Evangelistic Effectiveness tend to go together. When church members are truly excited about evangelism, there is a natural friendliness toward non-Christians. There is a genuine desire to welcome them into worship. Unchurched individuals often enter a church building expecting to be judged for their appearance, their past, or their lack of church knowledge. But when a church is full of people who truly embrace the command to love one another, the result is friendliness. Church researcher and consultant Thom Rainer says, “Of the hundreds of interviews I have conducted, an overwhelming majority listed the friendliness of the people as a major attraction to the particular church they eventually joined.” (Christian Post 4/19/10) 

Boomers Transform Volunteerism As the recession drives an increase in community service, Baby Boomers with ideas about how to help nonprofit and community organizations are remaking the face of volunteerism. Volunteerism among people age 45 and older jumped 4.2% during the 12 months that ended last September, compared with 0.7% for younger people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among those older workers, charity and volunteerism experts say, people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are increasingly seeking to use their professional skills as volunteers, eschewing office and administrative tasks for roles in marketing, publicity, fund raising, and management. (Leadership Network Advance 4/13/10) 

Massive Demographic Change is occurring. The reality: a potential 3 billion more people on the planet by 2040, mainly where humanity has not achieved a stable standard of living. (Strategy for Sustainability, Adam Werbach, Harvard Business Press, 2009)  

Most Influential Preachers Recently, LifeWay Research asked pastors who is influencing them. Their top-10 list included: Charles Stanley, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta; Rick Warren, Sr. Pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA; John MacArthur, Pastor-Teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA; Barbara Brown Taylor, religion teacher at Piedmont College in GA; David Jeremiah, Sr. Pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in San Diego, CA; Max Lucado, Minister of Writing and Preaching at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, TX; John Piper, Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis; and Andy Stanley, Sr. Pastor of North Point Community Church, Atlanta. (EdStetzer.com 4/13/10) 

Unchurched Claim Americans’ Top Giving Priorities Feeding and sheltering the needy and seeking cures for major diseases are our top priorities for charitable giving, according to a Parade magazine survey. Asked what they would do if given $100,000 to donate, the respondents allocated about $16,000 for the needy and more than $14,000 for disease research. Disaster relief and animal welfare were next, at about $9,300 and $8,800, respectively. The survey found 3 distinct types of givers who are driving a current “compassion boom” that counters the past trend of less volunteering during tough economic times: 1)Yeppies—young, engaged problem solvers who actively use social media and are open to a variety of causes. 2) Rapid Responders—focus on specific, often local causes. 3) Mission-minded—largely older people motivated by their faith. (Leadership Network Advance 4/13/10) 

Shoestring Marketing In this time of tight budgets where both entrepreneurs and customers are increasingly reluctant to part with a penny, it is more important than ever that small- and mid-sized organizations step up marketing. Recessions are times to expand, not contract. Most entrepreneurs instinctively know this, and it is why the trend now is toward increased marketing that costs little but delivers big, such as online video, blogs, coupons, word-of-mouth, direct-mail and customer service. Let me craft a shoestring marketing plan for you. 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (USA Today 1/5/09) 

Christianity 28% of U.S. adults, approximately 65 million people, have not participated in any church activities or services in the past 6 months—The Barna Group’s criteria for classifying them as “unchurched.” 61% of all unchurched U.S. adults self-identify as “Christian.” The makeup of unchurched Americans may be surprising. For example, 18% say they are born-again (they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and will go to heaven only because they have accepted Him as their Savior). 68% say God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe. 35% agree the Bible is totally accurate in all its principles, while just 15% say their religious faith is very important in their life. Among the unchurched, women outnumber men, Baby Boomers and older generations outnumber younger generations, and political conservatives outnumber liberals. A previous Barna study found 37% of non-churchgoing  Americans avoid churches because of negative past experiences in churches or with church people. (Barna Update 4/12/10) 

Social Networks are Mainstream 48% Americans 12 and older are now members of at least one social network, finds a new Arbitron and Edison Research study. Showing the rapid rate at which the trend has spread, just 24% of those 12 and up had joined a social network 2 years ago. Social networking has become a part of mainstream media behavior. What’s more, social networking is not the exclusive domain of the young. While 78% of teens and 77% of 18-to-24s have personal profile pages, so do 65% of 25-to-34s and 51% of 35-to-44s. Also, 30% of Americans age 12 and older who have a profile on at least one social networking site use them “several times a day” vs. 18% a year earlier. (Online Media Daily 4/12/10) 

Opportunity in Crisis Did you know the Chinese character for ‘crisis’ is the same one as for ‘opportunity’? It raises the question: How can we find the opportunity in crisis or chaos? Although chaos and chaotic systems appear to be random and out of control, patterns emerge and suggest or actually reveal an inherent order at the heart of seeming chaos. Understanding this is the first step toward finding the pattern of order that waits beneath the facade of a chaotic situation. However, often it takes fresh eyes—objective eyes—to find it. Let me help you find opportunity in your crisis! Contact 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or visit www.garydfoster.com. (Ivy SeaZine 2/10/09) 

Bowker’s Annual Publication Stats report 288,355 new titles were published in the U.S. in ’09 vs. 289,729 in ’08. The number getting the most attention is their tabulation of 764,448 titles “that fall outside Bowker’s traditional publishing and classification definitions.” That’s nearly 3 times the 271,851 “nontraditional” titles from ’08. Bowker’s “nontraditional” category was called “on-demand/short-run” books in ’08. The only distinction made between the 288K pool and the 764K pool is that for the latter, they were manufactured one at a time or by digital short-run, while the former were printed offset. Bowker’s Kelly Gallagher offers a rough estimate that 70–80% of nontraditional titles are on-demand public domain books, and another 15% are “micro-niche” titles, aimed at the tiniest of audiences. These counts do not include any book published without an ISBN (estimated at 10,000 to 100,000 unique titles) or any e-books (another 300,000 to 400,000 titles). (Publisher’s Lunch 4/15/10) 

Social Networking on the Job A full 6.8% of all the URLs accessed by businesses go to Facebook, and 10% of Internet bandwidth goes to YouTube, according to a new report from Network Box. “The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work,” Simon Heron, Internet security analyst. In addition to worker productivity concerns, employers have two other concerns here: First, that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and second, the amount of corporate bandwidth that is being used for non-corporate activity. (Around the Net 4/18/10) 

Where Do You Turn To? When Americans 12 and older were asked to identify the medium “you turn to first to learn about new music,” 39% chose radio, down from 63% on ’02. The Internet took up the slack with 31% today vs. 9% in ’02.  (Brandweek 4/19/10) 

Decline in Parental Availability Researchers who examined Census data from ’79 to ’08 found that, for a typical child since ’79, parents’ work hours have increased 12% in a two-parent family and 23% in a single-parent family. During that period, 45% of children have had both parents working full-time; 22% had at least one parent home part-time; and 33% had at least one parent home full-time. (USA Today 4/15/10)

Struggling to Hang On Among those who classify themselves as “middle class,” 41% say they are “struggling” to hang on to that status. Just 6% said they are “moving up beyond the middle class.” (ABC World News Poll) 

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