WMU provides creative, biblical response to the growing recession

Three cheers for Woman's Missionary Union and its willingness to act creatively and biblically during times of economic uncertainty and belt-tightening!

Instead of acting in the usual church-bureaucratic fashion—following the secular world's lead of laying people off or camouflaging its actions as some sort of reorganization—WMU has provided some important new groundwork for how to cope with the economic turmoil facing the United States and the rest of the world today.

According to Baptist Press on Friday: "During a Dec. 10 meeting at the 120-year-old organization’s Birmingham, Ala., headquarters, WMU Executive Director Wanda S. Lee told employees about the measures, which include budget reductions, streamlining expenses, a hiring freeze on vacant positions, a reduction on employer contributions to employee retirement plans, a freeze on merit pay increases, elimination of incentive bonuses in 2009 and the implementation of four weeks unpaid furlough for each staff member between January and August 2009."

News reports say WMU leadership sought to avoid layoffs and keep health insurance affordable for its about 100 employees, most of whom are female.

Putting individuals and families first and refusing to succumb to kneejerk business patterns which make some individuals and families suffer more than others, WMU acted in ways more consistent with biblical teachings about how Christians are to treat each other.

As the current economic recession continues to unfurl, church groups across the country are continuing to react in various ways, some more consistent than others with biblical principles.  Many are amping up their pleas for more donations even as their donors' home values, retirement accounts, and incomes slide. Some such as Focus on the Family have cut jobs and laid off people. (See my previous blog on this.) And still others are quietly going about reorganizations, which do the dirty work of layoffs but with a "positive" public spin put on it.

These are difficult times mostly because even governments don't seem to know exactly what to do to halt the declines. And predictions about how long this recession is going to last and how deep it eventually will become keep growing.

Interesting to note in WMU's actions is that most measures are short-term and time-limited. Most seem to be confined to 2009. That pattern seems to argue for optimism that the current situation will soon turn around. We can only hope WMU is right.

Meanwhile, individual Christians, churches, church institutions, and parachurch organizations would all do well to take note of WMU's biblically based creativity in addressing the current situation. 

Annual CBA retailer's show illustrates changes under way

At the annual International Christian Retail Show in Orlando, FL, this week, the trends besieging the U.S. economy are self-evident in this large assemblage of companies that supply books, music, and other Christian products.

Ridiculously high gasoline prices appear to have cut into the usually robust attendance. Empty booth spaces and less than booming sales appear to reflect the hysteria surrounding the supposed recession impacting the U.S. economy coast to coast. The absence of huge, expensive advertising banners reflect the credit crunch. 

Or are these things really as they seem?

The wild card here is the role that Internet shopping and online advertising and promotion play in today's sales of books and other items. Is business really slowing down as it appears? Or it is changing and morphing into some new forms?

Fifteen years ago Internet shopping was more like a pipe dream that only a small portion of the population understood. Today, it's as common as bluebonnets in spring in Texas. I rarely venture into a retail store to purchase clothes, books, and a whole array of other products and services; instead I travel to my favorite shopping websites such as amazon.com and landsend.com. Every time I do this I marvel that I never need to leave my computer. I pay bills, do my banking, read the daily news, and receive and send prayer requests using my computer.

I also marvel how much of my business itself is conducted on the Internet. Five years ago, books-on-demand printing was in its diaper stage.  Today, knowing whether a book was produced one book at a time or printed on traditional presses rolling out thousands of copies an hour requires an expert eye and a lot of luck. On most computers the work of artists and writers travels at the speed of email.

Change is a hallmark of life these days. It seems to travel at the speed of lightning. This means old ways are passing away; new ways are emerging—all this at breakneck speed.

That's what makes assessing this year's show, sponsored by Christian Booksellers Association, so difficult. I asked a fellow participant what he thought of the world's largest Christian retail show. He responded, "I just met a man whose whole bookstore is online. He only purchases books one at a time from the wholesaler after he already has sold them through his online store". He seemed shocked at what he had learned.  I was shocked that he was shocked at what he had heard.

Websites now feature all the new book titles launching into the market this year (a main reason store buyers once attended CBA each year). Even CBA offers online seminars like it formerly reserved only for this annual show. 

I have no crystal ball on the future of CBA's International Christian Retail Show, but I do know that all the hubbub about the high gasoline prices, the so-called recession, and the hysteria of the "credit crunch" caused by the overheated real-estate market earlier this decade will force us to change—perhaps in some very drastic ways.  But change is not always bad. God always can use change for His good.