End of an Era

When I heard that Lifeway stores were closing last week, I had a rush of mixed emotions, because the stores have been a part of my life for so long.

Once, back in pre-history, Baptists were cared for by something they had invented called "boards." We had a Foreign Mission Board and a Home Mission Board. Pastors looking to retirement had the Annuity Board, but the rank-and-file members knew about the Sunday School Board. They were a service that made sure we had those all-important Sunday School record books, the offering envelopes and even those pesky grade slips for Training Union. Those yellow training union report slips were the bane of my existence, because some schemer had listed "Daily Bible Reading" as worth 21 points, so even if you were there, studied your lesson, were attending worship, etc, you could only make a "79," a "C," in Training Union.

The Sunday School Board took care of us, though. They made sure we had Bible School materials, and of course we could get our Baptist Hymnals there. My home church, even in the 70s, was still happy with the 1940s version called the "Broadman Hymnal," when most of the other churches in our town were using the more contemporary 1956 "Baptist Hymnal." And of course, Broadman was inseparably linked to the Sunday School Board.

And they had stores! The Baptist Book Store was only put in privileged towns. I think there were only a half dozen in Texas when I was a kid, but you could actually walk in in get your materials, rather than having to fill out an order form and mail it and wait for them to get there. And Lubbock was only 60 miles away. There was a Baptist Bookstore there, at a major crossroads called Broadway and Avenue Q. I could wander through the aisles of the store while my parents checked off items from their church list.

It's so strange to think about now, but I was introduced to Robert Heinlein at -- yes -- Baptist Bookstore. His juvie novel, Have Space Suit - Will Travel - was on the shelves there with all the juvenile mission biographies and the sanctified books we bought. I thought Heinlein was probably a missionary Baptist himself until I was a senior in high school and we got Stranger in a Strange Land in our library, and I checked it out, thinking it was another of his juvies. Let's say I was a little shocked, and thought, very un-Baptistically, that perhaps Heinlein had lost his salvation before he wrote that book -- or because of it. I had bought nearly all of Heinlein's juvies, but I will always be able to say that I bought my first science fiction book at Baptist Book Store on Avenue Q in Lubbock.

They had everything, including disposable communion cups and pre-cut communion bread squares boxed and sealed in plastic -- both of those things an abomination to our local church where we drank our Welch's grape juice from crystal communion cups and the deacons' wives baked the unleavened bread, which was broken while the pastor quoted, "This is my body, broken for you."

As a student at Texas Tech, I even bought my first non-King James Bible there, and really felt I had done something. I would even buy a (gulp) Good News for Modern Man and a Living Bible there later. By that time, in the "cool" seventies, they even had a youth section, and played vinyl and cassettes of contemporary music like "He's Everything to Me," while a three color disk turned slowly in front of an incandescent bulb, changing the shading of the Jesus posters on the wall. One poster had "Jesus" in a Pepsi logo, and said, "Come Alive - You're in the Jesus Generation." I bought it.

The Baptist Bookstore flourished in those years, before the Great Divorce between the Southern Baptists and the Texas Baptists, when we all felt like children of the Divorce, and wondered if we had caused it, and if maybe they would get back together. But before that, we lived an idyllic existence. We all got our church music there. We got our Sunday School materials there. In the eighties, when I was made VBS director of our local association, I would go to Baptist Bookstore and buy a load of VBS materials on consignment to set up during the annual VBS convention I hosted, where I showed them the materials we would all use, and ran through this year's filmstrip, and thankfully had some ladies who knew how to do the crafts we would all do and taught the potential workers. And the people would buy their materials there, and Baptist Bookstore gave us, I think, a 10% commission for sales, money which I turned back to the Association so we would have plenty to finance next year's  convention.

Then, things happened. Boards became passe, and the Sunday School Board got a cooler name, "Lifeway." And the Baptist Bookstore, not wanting to seem so one-denominational, became Lifeway Bookstores, then Lifeway Christian Stores, when they realized that books were not really that cool. Of course, Christian Bookstores were on the way out. I watched other bookstores as well as our own, as they moved the books to a far wall to make room for posters, T-Shirts, and records, then cassettes, then CDs. The survivor stores also brought in home schooling materials.

I remember the time I went to the checkout shelf at one Christian store and they had "Jesus candy" for sale there.

And then, one of the competitors for Lifeway decided it was great to be open on Sundays, from 8-5 as well. They were gracious enough to give their employees Easter off, but every other Sunday was just another day. I often wondered who shopped there at 10 AM on Sunday.

Lifeway managed to keep itself unstained from these things, but they had lost their vision. More and more, I found that if I needed something, I had to go online because stores didn't want to be overstocked on inventory for dated materials. There had been a time in the past when I could just tell them the name of my church, and they let me walk out without paying. Our church got the bill later. Then I needed my account number. Then came the time when a lady told me that they didn't do account numbers. That I needed a church credit card or needed to fill out some paperwork.

And now, Lifeway's brick and mortar stores are shutting down, and as far as I know, all that is left is Mardel's Book Store, and I wonder if they are only staying alive because of their parent company, Hobby Lobby, who usually has its own brick and mortar nearby.

Online shopping is easy, usually cheaper, and nearly always "in stock." But there is something about holding a Bible in your hands before you buy it. When you are buying a Bible, you are buying a companion for life, and one of your grandchildren may have it some day. You want to know how a Bible smells, how the pages sound as you turn them, and how the leather feels in your hands. And they still haven't figured how to do that on the internet. I made the mistake one year of ordering our Bibles that we give our seniors outside of a brick and mortar. It was before online took over, and I ordered them by phone, dictating each student's name to be imprinted, and paying by credit card. They got it all right, but the picture in the catalog I had was deceiving. Twelve seniors that year got Bibles that were somewhere between the size of the ones their grandmothers brought to worship, and the one that was on the table in front of the pulpit. No wonder they were a close-out bargain.

Now, all of our record keeping materials will be bought online. All of those Sunday School things -- online. VBS we have done online for a long time, because there is a  smorgasbord of competing companies, all interested in our business. That's also why we don't have an associational VBS clinic any more.

Okay, here it comes. I'm getting old. Would it be too hard to give us a Sunday School Board again? Oh, I know, we now have "Study Groups" and "Discipleship Groups" and "Growth Groups." Forget Training Union (though I was surprised to see they still have Training Union quarterlies online -- they just don't call it that now). Okay, I guess it would not be financially solvent, but then again, the Boards were never intended to turn a profit. There were there to serve.

Don't go calling me an old fogey or some Luddite for having these thoughts. Don't think I'm some close-minded fundamentalist who longs for the good old days. Remember who I am. After all, I once bought a Heinlein book at a Baptist Book Store.