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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

March 10, 2008 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Traditional Family Is Alive Of the nation’s 73 million children, nearly 45 million (62%) live with their biological parents, according to the Census Bureau. Another 19 million live with their unmarried, biological mothers. Based on ’04 surveys, the report also shows cohabiting families are on the rise, with 3.7 million children living with one biological parent and an unmarried partner. Jenny Tyree, Focus on the Family marriage analyst said, “Research continues to show that these children have poorer emotional health and are at higher risk to suffer abuse than their peers in married families. Marriage continues to be one of the greatest gifts a parent can give a child.” (CitizenLink 2/21/08) 

Bold Book Marketing Ploy? In the package-goods world, offering free samples is usually a slam-dunk: Customers fall in love with the freebie and then turn into paying customers. But in the world of book publishing, the news that Harper Collins will give away free electronic versions of best-sellers, and that Random House will be selling books by the chapter, have raised a few eyebrows. Just as consumers have come to expect they can sample music online, they have also become accustomed to browsing through books, thanks to Amazon's Search Inside technology. Making an entire book available for free, or selling a book chapter by chapter will give you a distinctive Amazon doesn’t offer. (Marketing Dailey 2/19/08)

CFOs Top Concerns 1-Consumer Demands, 2-Cost of labor, 3-Credit markets/Interest rate, 4-Cost of fuel, 5-Health care cost, 6-Housing market fallout, 7-Skilled-labor shortage, 8-Cost of nonfuel commodities, 9-Currency values. (CFO 2/08) 

How America Does Church Unattached - people who had attended neither a conventional church nor a faith community during the past year represents 25% of adult Americans. A third of these have never attended a church. Intermittents - participated in a conventional church or a faith community within the past year constitutes 15% of U.S. adults. Two-thirds attended at least one church event within the past 6 months. Homebodies -did not attend a conventional church during the past month, but did attend a meeting of a house church comprises 3% of American adults. Blenders - attended both a conventional church and a house church during the past month represent 3% of the adult population. Conventionals - attended a conventional church during the past month but not a house church accounts for 56% of U.S. adults. (Barna Online 3/3/08) 

Credit Card Crises Americans are drowning in debt. Consumers have racked up more than $2.2 trillion in purchases and cash advances on major credit cards in just the last year. And it’s become a habit for them to spend more than they have. The overall credit card debt grew by 315% from ’89 to ’06. To compound the problem, fewer people are paying their credit cards bills on time. The percentage of people delinquent on their credit cards is the highest it’s been in 3 years. (CNN.com 2/22/08) 

Executive Search firms report ’07 as their biggest revenue year ever, up 17% over ’06, which was a great year itself.  Despite the success of web sites like Monster.com and HCareers, never have search firms been used as much as they are now. (Reflections from the Lamp, winter ’08) 

Cult Growth Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) reported the largest membership increases in a year, according to the National Council of Churches’ 2008 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches. Although Jehovah’s Witnesses currently rank 25th in size with over 1.06 million members, they reported a 2.25% increase since the publication of the 2007 Yearbook. The Mormon church grew 1.56% and is listed by the NCC as the 4th largest “church.” Others among the top 25 largest churches reporting increases include The Catholic Church at 0.87%; Southern Baptist Convention (0.22%); African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (0.21%); and the Assemblies of God (0.19%). The greatest membership losses were reported by The Episcopal Church (4.15%) and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) (2.36%). Both are currently wracked by theological differences and the issue of homosexuality. American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America were also hit with large losses (1.82% and 1.58%). The United Methodists saw a 0.99% decrease but remains the 3rd largest U.S. church body with nearly 8 million members. (Christian Post 2/20/08) 

Unchurched American adults who have not attended a church or faith community in the past year are less likely to be concerned about the U.S. moral condition, much less likely to believe they are making a positive difference in the world, less optimistic about the future, less likely to believe the Bible is totally accurate in its principles, more likely to believe Satan and the Holy Spirit are symbolic (not real) figures, more likely to believe Jesus sinned while on earth, much more likely to believe the holy literature of the major faiths all teach the same principles and less likely to believe a person can be under demonic influence. (Barna Online 3/3/08) 

Homeschooler numbers continue to grow. Brian Ray of National Home Education Research Institute estimates 1.9 million to 2.4 million K-12 children were home educated during ’05-06. Research shows homeschoolers on average exceed the national average on standardized achievement test for elementary and secondary grades, and they tend to score above the national average on the ACT and SAT college entrance exams. According to The Old Schoolhouse Magazine , 27% of home school households had incomes of $31-$50-K, $51-$70-K (25%) and $71-$100-K (22%). (CBA Retailers+Resources 2/08) 

Stopwatch Marketing Consumers don’t spend any more time standing in line to examine your product than their grandparents did, but they have a lot more lines to choose from. So if one line isn’t moving at a speed they like, they move to another one. Today marketers have to give their customers more than the traditional 4 Ps (Price, Product, Promotion and Place); they have to reduce the length of the queue waiting to enter the consciousness of a potential customer. Consumer decision making is time dependent, and that time is always measured by the consumer, either implicitly or explicitly. On any given day, at any given life stage, in any given economic environment, individual consumers will behave differently than a backward looking model would suggest. The same consumer utilizes different stopwatches for different purchases on different days and in different states of mind, often without knowing it and certainly without calling it out. (Stopwatch Marketing, John Rosen & Anna Maria Turano, Penguin Group 2008) 

Christian Publishers and retailers report increased Bible sales in ’07 fueled by audio editions Thomas Nelson’s The Word of Promise audio project was the top-selling Bible at Christian retail in Q4 of ’07, while Zondervan’s Inspired by ... The Bible Experience audio edition and derivative products have sold more than 700,000 units since its 10/06 release. Christian retailers report substantial Bible sales increases for the year. Some predict a resurgence of the study Bible driven by several soon-to-release titles including The Chronological Study Bible (Thomas Nelson), The ESV Study Bible (Crossway) and Zondervan’s re-launch of the NIV Teen Study Bible and the NIV Study Bible. (Christian E-tailing 2/25/08) 

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum estimates the U.S. is 78% Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51% and slipping. More than 25% of U.S. adults have left the faith of their childhood for another religion or no religion. Factoring in moves from one stream or denomination of Protestantism to another, the number rises to 44%. 25% of adults 18 to 29 claim no religious affiliation. 3 times as many are moving into no affiliation than moving to affiliation. While nearly 1 in 3 Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than 1 in 4 are Catholic today. Changes in Protestant affiliation are swelling the ranks of non-denominational churches, while Baptist and Methodist are showing net losses. Although evangelical churches strive to win new believers from the “unchurched,” most converts to evangelical churches were raised Protestant. For all of the attention they get, non-Christian religions still constitute only about 5% of the American population. (NY Times 2/26/08, Christianity Today 2/27/08) 

Christian Book Publishers receive a combined total of almost 250,000 manuscripts during a typical year with some of the 300 publishers receiving more than 10,000. On average about 5% of those submissions get published or approximately 12,000 titles a year. The average first printing of a book for a new author is just under 4,700 copies. (Christian Writers’ Market Guide 2008, Sally Stuart, WaterBrook 2008) 

Packaged Facts reports African Americans in the U.S. number 39 million and their buying power of $892 bn. is expected to exceed $1.1 trillion in ’12. This would be a cumulative growth of 28.4%. Also: 54% of African-American buying power lives in the South while 48% resides in central cities. Marrieds control 48% and households with an income of $75,000 account for 45% of the total. There are 2.4 million African-Americans in $75K+ households. (Center for Media Research Brief 2/20/08) 

Churn Expect to lose 1/3 to1/2 half of your e-mail database every year due to list churn. For many, a significant portion of this churn results from a poorly implemented e-mail address change procedure. Or worse yet, none at all! When you don’t help subscribers change addresses, not only will you lose more of them than you need to, but you throw away the money you spent to acquire them, as well as any potential revenue. (E-mail Insider 2/28/08) 

Women CEOs Nearly 10.4 million U.S. firms are owned (50% or more) by women, employing more than 12.8 million people, and generating $1.9 trillion in sales. Their firms have continued to grow at nearly double the rate of all firms (42% vs. 24%). Women-owned firms, account for 41% of all privately held firms. There are 2.4 million firms owned 50% or more by women of color in the U.S., employing 1.6 million people and generating nearly $230 billion in annual sales. (Center for Media Research Brief 3/3/08)

For information on how to become a subscriber to the entire 3-page Foster Letter---Religious Market Update, E-mail us at: subscribe@garydfoster.com