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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

September 10, 2007 edition of

The FOSTER Letter—Religious Market Update

Modern Fatherhood formerly known as modern mother-hood—3 or 4 decades ago it was the moms who did it all. They entered the work force and strove mightily. But when they came home, they immediately assumed the “second shift” of kids and housework. It was exhausting, insane, impossible -- and fulfilling. Now men want what moms have. In fact, they have come to see being an involved dad as the true mark of having it all. In the past year, the number of dads that say spending time with family is what they are most likely to do in their spare time has gone from 52% to 62%. (Advertising Age 8/20/07) 

Happy Because An AP and MTV study indicates young people view human relationships, especially family ties, as the greatest cause of happiness in life. 73% said their relationship with their parents makes them happy. 64% of 13-to 17-year olds whose parents are still together wake up happy in the morning, 20% higher than kids of divorced parents. After family, it’s spending time with friends followed by spending time with a significant other. 92% definitely or possibly want to get married, and most want to have children. However, being sexually active generally causes unhappiness in 13-to 17-year olds. Even for 18 to 24s, sex may lead to temporary happiness but generally causes unhappiness. 55% say religion is either “a very important part of life” or the “single most important thing” in life. People who have a religion or some kind of spirituality tend to be happier. When asked who is their hero, 10% named God, 5% a teacher, but nearly 50% said mom and/or dad. (LifeSiteNews.com 8/21/07) 

More Give While Living Americans are increasingly giving their money away while they are still alive, often by creating private foundations and hiring their children to run them or serve on the boards. The number of independent foundations has swelled by 77% in the past 10 years to 63,059, and 9 out of 10 are family foundations. Many are also giving money to their kids and others while they are living. Gallup Poll reports 22% of Americans have received what they view as a large money gift from living relatives. (Chronicle of Philanthropy 8/24/07) 

How To Grow little companies and ministries into big ones. 1. Focus What are we trying to make happen? How will we measure success? See it clearly. Say it plainly. 2. Evaluate What is the competitive environment? Do we understand the felt needs of our prospective customer? What is holding us back? Name the limiting factors. 3. Prioritize When two of our goals come into conflict, which one bows the knee? Prioritize our objectives. 4. Strategize What would be the shortest route to our primary goal? What levers might we use to dislodge impediments? How might we nullify other limiting factors? Are we willing to modify the business model? This is the moment when the future is won or lost. 5. Implement Are we willing to pull the trigger? Quit talking and DO something. Nothing changes until action is taken. For more contact me at 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. (Monday Morning memo 9/3/07) 

Real U.S. Median Household Income climbed between ’05 and ’06, reaching $48,200, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the second consecutive year that income has risen. Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, from 12.6% in ’05 to 12.3% in ’06. There were 36.5 million people in poverty in ’06, not statistically different from ’05. (Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S. ’06 Report.)  

Global Christianity “By the year 2050, 3 billion Christians will inhabit the globe, but of those only 1 in 6 will be a non-Hispanic Caucasian,” claims Philip Jenkins. According to his projections, there will be 3 Christians for every 2 Muslims in 40 to 50 years—and in the foreseeable future. (Next Christendom: The Coming of Globalized Christianity Oxford University Press, 2002) 

Get Them In A Group According to Smallgroups.com surveys, there is a 10% likelihood that a church visitor will become a member, but if the visitor is invited to a small group, that likelihood spikes to 50%.(Outreach 9-10/07) 

Public Laptops According to a 3M survey, 45% of laptop-using business travelers admit to peeking at someone else’s laptop in public places. 50% have noticed others looking at their laptop in public places. (ESA Today 8/21/07) 

How Do We Keep Our Organization As Agile As A Startup? Often an objective set of outside eyes like mine can see opportunities you have overlooked, but ones your competition could leverage against you. So beat the competition by being your own competitor and exploit those opportunities yourself. Contact me at 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com.(Monday Morning memo 5/1/06) 

Rock Stars Die Young North American and British rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely to die a premature death as ordinary citizens of the same age according to the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. (USA Today 9/4/07) 

Faith At Work As it has become more politically and socially acceptable to be vocal about one’s faith, companies large and small are putting religion in their business practices. Ohio University’s Jan Slater says the faith-based movement is getting bigger all the time, with companies like Coca-Cola to Procter & Gamble holding marketing summits on how to target the faithful. But for smaller companies, faith is central to how they do business. It’s a core value. Most people genuinely feel a Christian business owner will treat them honestly. Interestingly, both the religious and secular community hold Christian business owners to a higher standard. (Columbus Dispatch 7/20/07) 

Priorities Differ The latest Barna survey finds that the most radical differences of opinion on what needs to change in America are between evangelicals and those not born-again. Overall, 82% of American adults say a change in the overall care and resources devoted to children is absolutely necessary in the immediate future. Only 62% of evangelicals agreed. While enhancing the health of Christian churches was the lowest priority among Americans (44%), evangelicals made it one of their highest priorities. Also among top evangelical priorities is upgrading the state of marriage and families and improving the spiritual condition of the nation. In each of these cases, evangelicals were more than 30 percentage points more likely than other adults to say these issues are absolutely necessary for the immediate future. “Overall, evangelical Christians stood out as the segment that holds views that are most dissimilar from the typical perspectives of Americans,” states the report. (Barna Online 8/20/07) 

Big Problem According to a Pew Research study, adults of all ages consider unwed parenting to be a problem for our society, and 71% say births to unwed mothers is a “big problem.” 69% say a child needs both a mother and a father to grow up happily. Oxymoronically, just 38% believe premarital sex is wrong. (PWB 8/31/07) 

Web Monitoring An American Management Association study finds that from ’02 to ’07, the number of companies that monitor employee Internet use has risen 13%. More than 75% of employers now track employee Web use to some degree, and dozens of software companies offer programs to monitor or to restrict Web access. (CFO 8/07) 

ChristianTrade International is premiering a brand-new Marketsquare International convention in Toronto 1/24-26/08. Many Christian publishers and product companies are seeing double-digit increases in their international sales of product and rights. This venue will fill the void left by CBA’s decision to discontinue its CBA EXPO. For more visit http://www.ctaintl.com. (Foster Network 8/07) 

Follow Beliefs 68% of Americans 13-24 follow their own religious and spiritual beliefs, but think other religious beliefs could be true as well. Just 31% strongly believe their religious beliefs are true and universal, and that other religious beliefs are not right. (CR Online 8/31/07) 

Hispanic Generations While numerous U.S. churches have been adding Spanish services to meet the needs of new immigrants, an increasing number of Hispanic congregations are starting English services. It’s an effort to meet the demands of 2nd and 3rd generation Hispanics, keep families together and reach non-Latinos. An ’07 Pew survey found 77% of 1st-generation, churchgoing Hispanics choose churches with Hispanic clergy, Spanish-language services and a mostly Hispanic congregation. But as they become more Americanized, the hold loosens: 53% of 2nd-generation Latinos attend ethnic congregations. It drops to 42% for the 3rd generation and higher. (Saratogian.com 8/23/07) 

Benefits 77% of U.S. workers in private industry receive paid vacation and 76% paid holidays, 15% have access to employer assistance for childcare, 12% have access to long-term care insurance, 71% have access to medical care, 46% to dental care, 29% to vision care and 64% to outpatient prescription drug coverage. (Statistical Abstract of the U.S.: 2008) 

The Audiobook Market grew 6% increase in ’06, with sales now estimated at $923 million, reports the Audio Publishers Association. Best-selling audiobook products were most likely to be unabridged, in CD format, book-based, fiction (69%), targeted at adults and sold through retail channels and to libraries. Audio downloads represented 14% of ’06 sales vs. 9% in ’05. Retail channels account for 30% of dollar volume, 10% from downloads and 32% from libraries. Christian E-tailing 8/27/07) 

Young Adult Drop-Out About 1 in 4 Protestant young people have left the church. 70% of Protestants age 18 to 30 drop out before age 23. 34% have not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. “Unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt,” says Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow in After the Baby Boomers. (The Corner 8/7/07) 

Performance in the business environment can be traced to three employee qualities: Mission ownership, a sense of urgency and personal commitment. I can help you assess employee performance in these areas and point your company to higher productivity and profits through maximizing existing staff talent. Contact me at 419-238-4082, GFosterCns@rmi.net or www.GaryDFoster.com. 

BtoB Embraces New Media Research by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB magazine reports that 31% of B2B marketers allocate 20% or more of their total media budgets to new media platforms, compared with only 5% of B2C marketers 50% of the B2B respondents plan to allocate more than 10% of their budgets to new media. (Center for Media Research Briefing 8/30/07) 

Better Movies According to Movieguide’s Ted Baehr, since ’92 and ’93, the number of movies with positive Christian content has jumped 5-fold, from slightly more than 10% to nearly 51% of the Top 300 movies made by Hollywood and the entertainment industry! (Foster network 8/23/07) 

God Thoughts = Good Choices Thoughts related to God cultivate cooperative behavior and generosity, report Univ. of British Columbia researchers. The study found that priming people with “god concepts” (by activating subconscious thoughts through word games) promoted altruism. This effect was consistent in behavior, whether people declared themselves believers or not. It was also found that secular notions of civic responsibility promote cooperation and generosity. 68% of subjects from the religious prime groups were more generous to anonymous strangers, vs. 22% from groups where neutral or no concepts were activated. (Psychological Science 9/07)  

First Church 45% of people attending a Protestant church today were unchurched prior to attending their present church. (Outreach 9-10/07) 

Book Stats In 2004, (the most recent data available) about 1.2 million books were in print. 80% of those books sold fewer than 100 copies. 98% sold fewer than 5000 copies. Only a few hundred books sold more than 100,000 copies. About 10 books sold over a million copies. Overall, a bit more than 10% of the books published in any given year will sell over 5000 copies. (Right Writing News 8/31/07) 

Whom Do We Trust? 46% of Gallup Poll respondents have a “great deal” of confidence in the Church while 69% held this view of the military. (Outreach 9-10/07)

For information on how to become a subscriber to the entire 3-4 page Foster Letter---Religious Market Update, E-mail us at: subscribe@garydfoster.com