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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

July 10, 2008 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update 

Invisible Christians More Americans are acquainted with a gay or lesbian person than an evangelical, according to a recent Ellison Research study. Only 24% of all Americans who say they are not evangelical know an evangelical person very well, and 40% have never known any evangelicals at all, even casually. Meanwhile, 53% percent say they know a homosexual person very well, and 20% know such a person casually.  Homosexuals make up less than 10% of the U.S. population; 17% call themselves evangelical. Also, the study showed 62% of evangelicals, along with 75% of Protestant churchgoers and 77% of all Catholics, know a gay or lesbian person at least casually. 21% know a Mormon very well. Among Americans who do not call themselves born-again, 38% know a born-again Christian very well, and 18% have never known one. Half of all Americans know a member of the Christian clergy very well, 20% know one casually, and 12% have never known a clergyperson. Among people who regularly attend worship services, 30% do not currently know any clergy members very well, and 14% say they do not even know one casually, including their own minister or priest. Only 39% of people under 35 know a Christian clergyperson very well vs. 48% of people 35 to 54 years old and 61% of those 55 or older. Just 23% of Catholic churchgoers report knowing any clergy. (Christian Post 6/26/08) 

Business Intelligence (customer and market information) is a key and necessary strategic element for every Christian ministry and product company. I can provide a full-fledged scan of the environment facing your organization, plus seasoned advice on what it means and how to best respond.  Contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com.  

Life Publishing, formerly Lawson Falle, has been acquired from Dicksons by Marian Heath, a 65-year-old Wareham, MA-based greeting card company. In addition to Lawson Falle, Marion Heath simultaneously acquired Portal Greetings and Chatterbox Cards, making them one of the 4 largest social expression companies globally. Rick Tocquigny, CEO, said, "Product design and content will be strengthened, and the new pocket-by-pocket inventory control software will increase retailers’ inventory turns. The parent company is also committed to delivering the most environmentally friendly greetings cards on the market.” (Foster Network 7/27/08) 

Sleep Confused Studies find people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours per night live the longest. Those who sleep 8 hours or more or less than 6.5 hours don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too little. The big surprise is that “sleeping long” seems to start at 8 hours; sleeping 8.5 hours might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hours. (Time 6/6/08) 

Fatherless 37% of juveniles, when first arrested for a serious crime, reported a parent or sibling in prison. Young men without father-figures are twice as likely to be incarcerated as those with them. (Christianity Today 6/08) 

Protecting Our Children Studies show 25-33% of girls and 5-15% of boys will be sexually abused by the age of 18. The majority will be abused by family members or trusted family friends. Churches are urged to take steps in protecting children from sexual predators. (SBC Life Special Report 6/2/08) 

Small Business Strategies for Tough Times The NFIB May 2008 Small Business Economic Trends Report shows small business optimism to be at its lowest level since the ’79 oil embargo. Small business analyst Warrilow and Co finds only 40% of small business owners are optimistic about their own sales, and just 27.5% are optimistic about the economy generally. Although larger forces exist that we cannot control, there are options that can help. Look for new clients: Be open to pursuing business opportunities outside the norm. Open your mind to what is possible; try a bunch of new things and see what sticks. Spend money where it will do the most good: Cut back where you can, but consider increasing spending in areas that offer the greatest potential for increasing sales, e.g. advertising, PR, business development, pay-per-click or sales training. Increase your shoestring marketing: There are many ways to get the word out without breaking the bank. Treat existing clients well: Take extra special care of those clients who are already customers. Add line extensions: Creating additional, related profit centers means that when one part of your business is down, another will probably be up. Look for government contracts: Even in down times, the federal government still has contracts that need to be fulfilled by small business vendors. Seize the opportunity: Look at slow times as an opportunity to experiment. Whether it is offering a new product or trying out a new advertising campaign, use down-times to refine strategies that can be rolled out in a bigger way during the boom times. (USAToday.com 7/6/08) 

Reclaiming Church Dropouts 70% of young adults will leave the church between ages 18 and 22, yet LifeWay Research has found 39% of them will return if gently nudged by their parents or other family members. Another 21% will do so at the gracious urging of friends or acquaintances. (Outreach 7-8/08) 

Murphy Cap & Gown, the nation’s largest provider of religious apparel, has been acquired by Herff Jones, America’s largest manufacturer and publisher of educational products, recognition awards and graduation-related items for the school market. In business for 95 years, the St. Petersburg, FL-based 200-employee company will operate as a division of the Herff Jones Cap & Gown Division. (Christian e-Tailing 7/7/08) 

It Takes Courage To Learn From Our Mistakes. But not everyone who makes a mistake gains useful knowledge from the experience. The average person explains away their failure, unwilling to stare into the light and see that their “sacred cow” was just a cow. Are you strong enough to see the truth and name it? Are you willing to identify the substance of your own mistakes? This humility is the key to progress. It’s hard to say, “Our product or service fell below the customer’s expectations.” It’s easier to say, “We ran into unforeseeable circumstances” or “We were ahead of our time”, but what we might have learned from the mistake is lost, and now history must repeat itself one more time. This is why so few people who hold a job for 10 years get 10 years of experience; the average blame-shifter gets 1 year’s experience 10 times. Don’t let this be you. To learn things most people will never know, you must summon courage, see clearly, swallow your pride and speak the truth. Sometimes it helps to have a safe, objective point of view. Contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. (Monday Morning Memo from Wizard of Ads, 8/6/07) 

World Population is projected to reach 7 billion only 4 years from now. The world added its 6 billionth resident in ’99; today its population is approximately 6.7 billion. World population growth is slowing down; it took about 12 years for the world population to rise from 5 billion to 6 billion, while the increase from 6 to 7 billion will take 13 years. (US Census Bureau 6/08) 

Baby-Boomer Women are most likely to send electronic greeting cards over the Internet. Here’s a demographic profile of the 9.2% of adults who sent an e-card: Male-29.7%, Female-70.3%, Millennials-18.9%, GenXers-25.3%, Boomers-44.5% and Pre-Boomers-1.3%. (MRI's Survey of the American Consumer/’08) 

China will provide free copies of the Bible during the Olympic Games to athletes, spectators, tourists and anyone else who wants one.  About 10,000 bilingual copies of the Bible will be distributed in the Olympic Village which houses athletes and media, .according Li Chunnong, General Manager of the Nanjing-based Amity Publishing Co., China’s largest publisher of Christian works. (China Daily 7/7/08) 

Family-Friendly and faith-related films are a small but growing niche for many Christian retailers. The trend has seen movies and other DVD products occupy a more prominent position in many stores. Some report the genre’s sales have increased 100% in the past year and now account for as much as 5% of their total sales. (Christian e-Tailing 6/23/08) 

Be Merciless As you begin to plot out 2008, be brutally honest. It’s time to admit it if your spin-off will never turn the corner, that a launch was badly executed, or that a tired title or ministry is too weak to stand on its own. It’s OK for products and projects to have natural life cycles; they’re not all meant to live forever. For the biggest win with real potential, the reinvention of business and ministry models requires a focus of resources, brains and cash. Side projects and money-losers are distractions you can’t afford. Investment in new ideas is crucial. I can help you put aside emotional blindness and make the hard calls. Contact me at 419-238-4082, Gary@garydfoster.com or www.garydfoster.com. 

Religious Book Sales declined 21.5 % in April for a total of $34.2 million. According to the Association of American Publishers, the category was down 14.1% for the year to date. Overall U.S. book sales were down 3.5% for the month with flat sales for the year. (Christian e-Tailing 6/23/08) 

Growing Pluralism Most Americans don’t believe their religious tradition is the only way to eternal life, even if their denomination teaches otherwise, finds a Pew Forum study. 57% of evangelical church-attenders believe many religions can lead to eternal life. 70% of Americans with a religious affiliation hold this view, and 68% say there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion. D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University Sociologist of Religion said, “There’s a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance that is having theological consequences.” Americans are strongly religious: 92% believe in God, 74% believe in life after death and 63% say their respective scriptures are the word of  God. Yet, more than 1 in 4 Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Orthodox Christians express some doubts about God's existence, as do 6 in 10 Jews. And unexplainably, 21% of self-identified atheists believe in God or a universal spirit; 8% are “absolutely certain” of it. The majority of religious Americans believe many religions can lead to eternal life: mainline Protestants (83%), members of historic black Protestant churches (59%), Roman Catholics (79%), Jews (82%) and Muslims (56%). Yet 44% of the religiously affiliated also said their religion should preserve its traditional beliefs and practices. (AP 6/23/08) 

Ape Rights The Spanish Parliament’s move to grant rights previously reserved for human beings to chimpanzees and other apes is a victory for those seeking to minimize the uniqueness of humanity, a bioethics specialist says. An environmental committee in Spain’s legislature approved a resolution on 5/25/08  calling for the government to abide by the Great Apes Project, a 15-year-old campaign to grant the right to life, freedom and no torture to chimps, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos. The measure has the support of a majority of Parliament and is expected to become law, according to Reuters News Service. (BP News 7/1/08) 

Book Expo America, America’s largest book fair, showed decreased attendance from 36,112 in ’07 to 28,494 in ’08.  The show was in New York City from 5/29 to 6/1. (Various Sources) 

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