SPCK vs Society of St Stephen the Great: the end.

Phil Groom reports the closing of the book on the sorry case of the Society of St. Stephen the Great, and their destruction of what used to be SPCK bookshops. Full background at the SPCK/SSG blog, (and an update based on the SPCK statement) for those who remember this ongoing campaign. SPCK statement here.

Stephen Covey

Having cited Stephen Covey in a sermon on Sunday, I was sad to hear (via Twitter, sign of the times), that he has just died, aged 79. If I had to list the books which have influenced me the most, his '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' would be pretty near the top.

Here are the habits (note, reading this doesn't mean you've read the book! A bit more exposition here)

1. Be Proactive (take responsibility for yourself, your life, your direction)
2. Begin with the end in mind (work out what's most important to you)
3. Put First things First (see 2, then make it a priority)
4. Think Win-Win (prioritise relationships, success by co-operation, not competition)
5. Seek First to Understand, then to be Understood (empathy, listening, the more you appreciate people, the more they appreciate you)
6. Synergise (build on strengths, work in a team)
7. Sharpen the Saw (take time out for personal renewal, mind body and spirit)

There are several bits of the book that have really helped me:

Quadrant 2: everything that needs to be done is either urgent or non-urgent, important or not important. So everything falls into 1 of 4 categorites:

Urgent and important:  e.g. meeting my boss in 5 minutes
Non-Urgent and Important: e.g. my marriage
Urgent and not important: e.g. most email
Non-Urgent and Not important. watching TV

Covey puts these into a matrix of 4 boxes, and argues that Quadrant 2, the important but non-urgent, is what is most easily neglected. This includes things like relationships, skill development, prayer, rest, and most of the things that actually make us function well and grow. Without setting aside time for these things (and being accountable for that), they're easy to neglect. I've found this really helpful and try to book into the diary the people and things which, left from one day to the next, won't get the attention they deserve.

Circle of Concern: we have a 'circle of influence'  - you're in it now, because you're reading this. And a 'circle of concern', which is the things we're aware of,  and concerned about. The problem is that my circle of concern is bigger than my circle of influence. I'm concerned about the state of the UK, but I can only influence a very small part of it. Identifying and focusing on my circle of concern means I end up doing what I can do, rather than fretting about what I can't.

Sharpening the Saw: a woodcutter who stops to sharpen his saw every so often is more effective than one who just keeps hacking away. Plodding on wearily is less effective than being fit, fully rested, mentally alert and well informed etc. This is all 'work smarter, not harder' stuff, but also affects the quality of my family life, relationships, personal mood etc. And in terms of discipleship I'm going to follow Jesus better if I'm sharp than if I'm blunt. So I try to read, stay fit, take time out on retreat, be accountable to others etc. Emphasis on the word 'try' !!

update: how could I forget Putting the Big Rocks in First.......?

The best way to honour his memory? Throw away your 50 Shades of Grey and read 7 Habits instead.

50 Shades of Tory

After quietly sending 'we're all in this together' to the political landfill, secret memos reveal Government attempts to use another popular phrase to boost popularity. Variations currently being explored are:

50 Shades of Orange: a vulnerable political party signs up to a 5 year agreement which involves regular public humiliation over electoral reform, and being put in a series of awkward positions.

47 Shades of Grey: With the combined effects of austerity and efficiency savings, this government has been able to reduce overall greyness. Under Labour, there would have been 55 shades, and 11 would have been borrowed. In the long term we hope to reduce to 1 shade of grey, and allow the private sector to provide the rest.

50 Shards of Gary: Pop singers begin to explode as a tax avoidance scheme goes horribly wrong.

40 Shares of Gross: only available to those earning over £100,000 a year.

50 Grades of Shay: Goalkeeper Shay Given is recruited by Michael Gove to demonstrate that GCSEs are too easy. Given will attempt to take, and pass, all 50 subjects currently available in a period of 10 weeks.

50 Shades of Puce: Conservative backbenchers during the debate on Lords reform.

Harry Potter Theology Conference, sort of

Update: here's the programme. Looks fascinating. Lots of seminars on death, myth and morality.

Hot on the heels of the Journal of U2 Studies, Harry Potter is the latest popular phenomenon to gain academic interest. A 2 day conference at St. Andrews University starts today, with 50 lectures covereing different aspects of the Potter saga:

Topics include the role of paganism, British national identity and how death is dealt with in the book series. An anthology based on the conference is planned for publication in 2013.

The conference has been organised by Prof John Patrick Pazdziora from the University's School of English and Father Micah Snell from the University's Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts (ITIA).

The ITIA's aims are:

to advance and enrich an active conversation between Christian theology and the arts — bringing rigorous theological thinking to the arts, and bringing the resources of the arts to the enterprise of theology. As part of this, it seeks to explore the role of the imagination in the arts, as part of a wider theological interest in the imaginative aspects of our humanity.


So I'm guessing there'll be some theological lectures in amongst the 50, though the full programme isn't available online. More details from St. Andrews here.

In an intense series of almost 50 lectures over two days, experts on the series will discuss how they deal with death, the role of empathy and the influence of writers such as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Other papers will deal with paganism, magic and the use of food and British National Identity.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall, though there's always the chance Hermione would spot me and trap me in a jar. There are strong Christian themes, amongst all the others, in the Potter series, and you couldn't really get a more overtly Easter finale than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Richard Dawkins 'The Magic of Reality' Not Casting a Spell on Yeovil

Yeovil welcomes Richard Dawkins this evening to the Octagon Theatre - at the time of writing, sales for the matinee Salvation Army Christmas Carols are running well ahead of those for Dawkins, with less than half the £6 seats sold. It's maybe that sense that people still don't get it which drives Dawkins latest book. Glossy, packed with graphics and 'quirky' illustrations, 'The Magic of Reality' is yet another go at persuading people to ditch religion and embrace evolutionary science. Mind you, at £20 for the book folk maybe think they've spent enough. (Interesting that a full house spent much more than £6 a head to hear Marcus Brigstocke riffing on God questions for a night in Yeovil, can we only take information if it's packaged as entertainment? )

The thing is, it could just be a very good science book. Dawkins is good at science, it's his expertise. But it's trying to be a book on (i.e. against) religion. And it doesn't do very well. For example:

"To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say 'we don't understand it' but to say 'we will never understand it, so don't even try' ". Well, no. People have been pointing out for years that science and religion offer different levels of explanation of the same phenomena, just as a brain scientist will describe what's happening in my head right now differently from my description as the person with the head in question. I can believe that God is the prime agent in creation, but still be staggered and enlightened by the detail science discovers about the process. Loads of scientists have understood what they do as 'thinking God's thoughts after him', and seeking understanding doesn't run in conflict with faith.

Another example: Dawkins retells various creation myths about the human race, before giving the scientific account. This presumes that creation myths and science are trying to do the same job. But are they? The early chapters of Genesis are richly theological, they do a lot more than say 'here is the sequence of events, there, Biblical science 101 lesson over'. The most important question they are dealing with is probably not 'in what order and how long ago were things made?' but 'is the universe orderly or chaotic?' 'why is there suffering?' 'what's wrong with us?' 'what does the good life look like?' questions of meaning, purpose and identity. This is what 'myths' do. To compare them directly to the scientific account as if they were equivalent texts doesn't do them justice.

And finally "If something happens that appears to be inexplicable by science you can safely conclude one of two things. Either it didn't really happen, or we have exposed a shortcoming in present-day science." (p264). Now there's a faith statement if ever there was one. And it's ridiculously over the top. I fell in love with my wife and married her. Can science offer an explanation of that? Sort of, but only a very thinned down mixture of chemistry, psychology and random probability. It doesn't explain what actually happened. The scientific account is inadequate, we need other levels of explanation to truly do this justice. There are also several remarkable events in the way we ended up together: there might be a scientific explanation for the dating of the Anglican lectionary, population shifts in Shepton Mallet etc., but 'that was all just coincidence' isn't actually very convincing.

Reviewers of 'The God Delusion' have pointed out in numbers that Dawkins grasp of theology is shakier than his grasp of science. So what is he actually trying to do?

 - he's clearly passionate about science, and doing what he does best, telling the story of the scientific worldview. It's interesting in itself that Dawkins uses story and graphics to try to grab the readers attention (also done well in Bill Brysons 'Short History of Nearly Everything'). The left brain is trying to get the right brains attention.

 - Dawkins sees religion - all types of religion - as opponents of science, and repeatedly tries to hammer home the point that any religious account of reality is wrong, because it's not scientific. At the same time he tries to expound the 'magic of reality' - that we can get all the sense of wonder and awe we need from what science tells us. So he is trying to fill the 'God shaped hole' with a scientific alternative.

There are two problems with this:
a) The 'religious' account of reality is not trying to be scientific. It's a different, and complimentary, level of explanation.
b) the scientific replacement for religion doesn't itself do the job. I know of people who've found in God a level of meaning, purpose, grace and identity they never found in science. I know of another, troubled, individual, for whom none of the answers Dawkins offers would do any good. There is a reason why so many of us are 'superstitious', and it's not just evolution. I was reading the other day about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, and how a theistic recovery programme for alcoholism has worked for many people in a way no secular approach has ever done.

There's a lot of 'magic' which does need debunking, and I would love Richard Dawkins to share a stage at the Octagon with the clairvoyants and occultists which have been such a regular feature at the place in recent years. There is bad religion, and there's bad science too. And good magic.

And of course, scientists themselves aren't all agreed about reality, as the following graphic irrefutably demonstrates: (ht labspaces, original here.)

The Last Instrumental Worship Album...Ever!

I've already had a rant about the 'Best.... Ever' marketing and I'm tempted to do it all again. This kind of hype has no place in so-called 'Christian' business.

However, given the title, I can assume this will be the last ever intrumental worship CD produced by Kingsway, hot on the heels of their last ever collections of hymns, worship songs etc. After all, as Phil Groom points out, if the title really is true, then what's the point in producing anything else?

I also note that "The Best...Album in the World, Ever" is a registered trademark of the Virgin group. So if someone produced something that really was the best, they wouldn't be allowed to say so without being taken to court by Richard Branson. Nice.

For something a bit more in depth, Internet Monk is well worth a read today, looking at the whole enterprise of the 'Christian' market and the kind of things it consumes. 

Slightly more modest (actually how could anything be only 'slightly' more modest than this CD title? ) is the 'offer of the decade' from Church House, on hardback volumes from the Common Worship series. Some very hefty discounts.

Something for the Weekend

"Nobody ever said on their deathbed 'I wish I'd spent more time at the office'." (Rob Parsons The Sixty Minute Father)

SPCK bookshops - a few loose pages

The saga of the former SPCK bookshops wound up fairly rapidly last year following the takeover of the governing charity by the Charity Commissioners, and the closure of the remaining former SPCK bookshops, with Durham making a last stand until the roof beginning to fall in in the Great Kitchen (bit of a metaphor, that) precipitated the closure of the final remaining shop.

A couple of recent developments which might be of interest to folk who've followed all this -
1. The St Stephen the Great charity is being kept under charity commisioners control, and all the tribunal settlements (over £300k) with former staff have been made.

2. The SSG company registered at Companies House has been dissolved.

3. From the sound of it, the re-opened Durham Cathedral shop will need regular encouragement from customers if it's to return to being a top quality theological stockist. Building problems don't help, and I guess the loss of Tom Wright for high profile book launches won't help either, but it would be sad if it just became another cathedral tat shop for fudge and postcards. There are too many of those already.

4. There may be some kind of meet up at the Christian Resources Exhibition later this month in Sandown.

Art and Christianity Meme

Jonathan Evens has posted a summary of the responses to the 'Art and Christianity' meme from a couple of months ago, where people were asked to post ideas on novels, art, music, drama etc. which for them 'expresses something of the essence of Christianity'. Fascinating list, with a summary post on what the choices reveal. Jonathan raises an important issue (my italics):

the need for clarity in what we are responding to within such works i.e. are we suggesting that the Christian themes/language/imagery/forms we are responding to are consciously or unconsciously inherent within the artwork or its creation and, whichever we suggest, whether they are being subverted or affirmed through their use.

Durham Cathedral SPCK/SSG: the Last Post

The final curtain has fallen in Durham on Phil and Mark Brewers bruising foray into UK bookselling. The good news that Durham Cathedral is sticking to its promise to re-open the shop under Cathedral management. Earlier this week the shop was suddenly closed (probably by email - that seems to be the Brewers preferred way of laying people off), following some rapid reshuffling of stock the week before as snow and frost damage started affecting the Great Kitchen, main site of the bookshop.

Reports:
Bookseller
Church Times (subscriber only till Friday 5th Feb)
SPCK/SSG News Notes and Info (comments too)

According to the Northern Echo, the Cathedral has said that it will re-employ the 6 current staff, though it has longer term plans to do a feasibility study on the best site for a bookshop. I just hope that what was once a flagship theological bookshop doesn't get lost: it must be tempting for Cathedrals to follow the dollar and stock teatowels, fudge and union jack merchandise to pay for the biblically proportioned heating and maintenance bills. Durham used to be an excellent theological bookshop, and with a university and two training colleges on the doorstep, there must still be a market there if it can recover its reputation. The comments of the chapter clerk in the Echo report suggest that the bookshop and gift shop might be separate entities.

The Echo also notes: Neither the Brewers nor the Saint Stephen the Great Trust could be contacted for comment. Now there's a surprise.

Someone who I think is one of the bookshop staff has commented on the Durham Cathedral Facebook page: "We are devasted but I'm sure that the new shop will be a fantastic one. Thanks to our customers and friends for their support."

There is still some unfinished business:
- Unpaid staff, and issues over pension payments
- Brewer creditors, and whether they'll see their money again. However, unless creditors are prepared to pursue the Brewers through the courts (oh for a workable extradition treaty with the USA!), it's unlikely that the bills will be paid.
- The nature of the settlement with former staff who settled out of court with the Charity Commissioners in 2009.

Last I heard Phil Brewer owned a private plane (sorry, originally called this a 'jet', which isn't accurate - see comments. Got a bit carried away...) and Mark Brewer ran a law firm with 7 attorneys plus support staff, and regularly dealt with million dollar cases. They are named as the trustees of the Society of St. Stephen the Great (which originally took on the bookshops from SPCK), and the Directors of ENC Management (which took over from SSG, leaving all SSG bills unpaid and zeroing the Brewer debts at a stroke). I still can't work out how they get to walk away from all this. I also can't work out how Mark Brewer gets full marks for ethics.

As the title suggest, this is probably my last post on the SPCK/SSG campaign. Well done to Phil Groom, Dave Walker and Matt Wardman for being the backbone of it, lets hope and pray the Christian book trade can learn some lessons - they've certainly come at a price.

Fresh Expressions of Bookshop

Update: full statement from Living Oasis here, plus links to a brochure with their vision for the new shops/centres.

Dave Walker blogs on the plans for a number of former Wesley Owen shops to be relaunched as 'Living Oasis' shops, complete with:

# Coffee shop to be open to all – Christian and non Christian
# Lounge area – to be used, for example, by Church youth groups
# Children’s Play Area – a supervised and safe place for children whilst Mum/Dad relaxes or does some shopping in peace and quiet!
# Meeting room for Church use
# Prayer ministry facility

A few days ago I read the latest Encounters on the Edge by George Lings of the Church Army. Encounters is a brilliant series of booklets, looking at new forms of church, church planting, and questions of church and mission for todays church. The latest is on the '7 sacred spaces' of monasticism - 7 characteristic places found within 'new' and old monasticism which express the life of the community.

They are, in no particular order:
Chapel - place of public worship
Chapter - place of decision making and ordering community life
Refectory - place of eating and hospitality, community and service.
Cell - place of private prayer
Cloister - 'inbetween' space, unstructured, allows for informal interaction
Garden - place of manual work
Scriptorum - place of study.

There's a balance between places of work (the work of prayer, study and manual labour), public and private, formal and informal spaces, spaces where there are specific forms and 'rules' and places where things are more informal. Lings notes that in many churches, the only one of these spaces on offer is the 'chapel', but more and more churches now have a kitchen/community space, prayer chapel, office etc. Our local Yeovil Community church has a main auditorium, meeting rooms (chapter), places for prayer, and plenty of informal space for conversation and community life. There's also offices and workplaces, and a cafe (currently being re-thought).

So reading the bookshop proposals, lights began to go on all over the place. We have traditionally modelled the church's public presence on the Chapel, the place of public worship, and the other 6 spaces have had to fight for space around it (or in many cases simply don't exist). Cafe church is an attempt to put the Refectory at the heart of church life. What about Bookshop church, where the Scriptorum is central, but also with a balanced use of space for Refectory, Cell, Cloister (informal space = lounge) and Chapter? That's what the above list sounded like to me.

Except that it's not clear if these are intended to be the hub of an intentional Christian community, or simply a resource to the wider church. Can there be an intentional Christian community based around a high street workplace, the way that monasticism is an intentional Christian community built around a place of prayer, work and study? Would it be a church? (Does it matter?)

Our local bookshop functions a bit like the 'cloister' in Lings' list - I'm constantly bumping into people I know whilst browsing, and it's a good place for conversation and networking, as well as finding and buying books. I know of several churches who have added in bookshops to their site: it would be fun to do it the other way round: to start as a bookshop and add in places for prayer, worship, and the spaces needed to sustain and nurture a community life.

Exit Pursued by a Union: Brewer Pulls the Plug on Durham Shop

News on various blogs in the last 24 hours of the final moments of what used to be SPCK Bookshops. Regular readers will know that they were taken over by Texan family Phil and Mark Brewer a few years ago, and that the chain has gradually fallen apart amidst mistreatment of staff and attempted gagging of bloggers reporting the story.

The Charity Commissioners took possession of all but two remaining shops earlier this year, and settled out of court with 30 staff who, with the help of USDAW, were pursuing the Brewers for unfair dismissal and non-payment of wages. Then Chichester was seized and has now re-opened under the former manager to great rejoicing. I guess marching into the heart of Durham Cathedral was going to be difficult for a government agency, but Durham themselves gave 12 months notice on the bookshop in April 2009, and this week the Brewers threw in the towel and closed the shop, just after various health and safety concerns had forced the removal of the remaining stock from the main selling space, the Great Kitchen.

The Durham Cathedral site states that a new shop will open on the site in due course. I hope, for the sake of the existing staff, that it's sooner rather than later, and that the shop can recover some of the damage to its reputation inflicted by the mismanagement of the last couple of years.

From what I'm aware, there remain unpaid bills both to suppliers and to staff which the Brewers are liable for. I don't know if extradition policy works both ways, but it would be nice to think that they can't just disappear off into the USA undergrowth without some kind of accountability.

Another concern at this stage is that the new shop may follow the line pursued in other Cathedral bookshops, of going for the tourist market more than the theological book trade. Without the buying power of a decent sized chain (as SPCK was), an independent store may copy the likes of, say, Salisbury (to pick a local example - I've not done a comprehensive survey of all the cathedrals) and go for the dollars. That would be understandable, especially given the massive maintenance bill on Cathedrals, but it would be a loss as well.

'After You Believe', new Tom Wright book

Tom/NT Wright has a new book due out in March, called 'After You Believe'. The book tackles the problem that many churches see their job as warehousing people for heaven: counting the souls in through the door, and then keeping them safe but otherwise unchanged until the next life.

The book is about Christian character, and how it's formed. Interesting to note that 'character' is a current issue in various places - witness Mondays' Demos event with David Cameron at the start of their enquiry into character and it's place in the good society. Here's an extract from an interview with Wright:

N.T. Wright: The point about the word “virtue” – if we can recapture it in its strong sense – is that it refers, not so much to “doing the right things”, but to the forming of habits and hence of moral character.

I remember Rowan Williams describing the difference between a soldier who has a stiff drink and charges off into battle waving a sword and shouting a battle-cry, and the soldier who calmly makes 1000 small decisions to place someone else’s safety ahead of his or her own and then, on the 1001st time, when it really is a life-or-death situation, “instinctively” making the right decision. That, rather than the first, is the virtue of “courage”.

In the book I use, as a “secular” example, the lifetime forming of habits exemplified by Chesley Sullenberger III, the pilot who, last January, brought the US Airbus down safely in the Hudson River after a flock of geese got into the engines after take-off from La Guardia. All his instincts had been trained so that when the moment came he didn’t have to stop to think what to do; it just “came naturally”.

Forming character by deliberate choices goes against the grain of just doing what we feel like, and expressing ourselves - another extract from the same interview on Prodigal Kiwis makes this point. The goal of character formation is that holiness becomes 'what we feel like' and 'what comes naturally', rather than just a random splurge of what we happen to be thinking or feeling.

I'll be interested to see what Wright sees as the path to character formation. My suspicion is that a lot of it will be about getting a correct understanding of life, God, the future and the present. We're currently talking about character and change on our Growing Leaders course with a group of lay leaders, and exploring what helps this process, including spiritual disciplines, accountability, reflection, suffering, overcoming at the points where we're tempted to quit etc.

Making disciples is the great challenge for the modern church, so if Tom Wright is applying his mind to this then so much the better. What I'd really like to see though is not a book, but a curriculum.

Deliver us from Yeovil*

I note with profound sadness that a fellow blogger has used his/her/its public profile to cast aspersions on the good name of my home town. I can't for the life of me see why.

Given the normal style of Thomas Hardy's novels (think Ian McEwan without the upbeat optimism), siting his memorial plaque between a parking meter and a dustbin seems quite appropriate.

Hardy enthusiasts should count themselves lucky, Trevor Peacock, Ian Botham and Paddy Ashdown are all still in the queue. I guess being alive might be a problem for a memorial plaque in their cases.

Personally, I find the row of 5 urban objects quite artistic, in a slightly-down-at-heel-market-town sort of way. Given the snow forecast, those of you in the SE might be gazing longingly at that gritting bin. Hands off!

Photo: Martin Pakes, Crewkerne.

*I'm told this was an amendment to the Lords Prayer introduced by the good people of Sherborne, a royalist stronghold 5 miles East of here, across the Somerset/Dorset border. If anyone can confirm/deny the truth of this rumour, that would be helpful. This year we celebrated 1100 years since the ecclesiastical iron curtain that is a diocesan boundary came down between Bath and Wells and Salisbury Diocese. However I note with distress that several of our local people still make a pilgrimage to Sherborne Abbey for their crib and carol services. Perhaps I need to disguise myself and go spy out what they're doing right.

'How to Do Mission Action Planning'

There are roughly 20 CofE Dioceses now doing some form of Mission Action Planning, an approach to mission strategy pioneered by York and London under David Hope's leadership. But it's quite a faff wading through 20 sets of Diocesan documents, all of them different, to work out what MAPping is really about, how it works, and how to do it.

Good news then: 'How To Do Mission Action Planning' has just been published by SPCK. It's written by Mike Chew and Mark Ireland, and there's a bit more blurb here, along with a list of the Dioceses known to be doing Mission Action Planning. There's quite a handy dedicated website, which explains more about it, who's doing it, and has various examples from different churches, which is a good starter for 10.

Interestingly, our Archdeacon recently asked all her churches whether they'd be interested in developing some kind of parish action plan. Quite a few said yes. So this might be quite timely.

Bookshops for Sale, ex-SPCK

Phil Groom reports that some of the former SPCK bookshop premises are now up for sale, as the Charity Commissioners go about the process of selling assets of what used to be The Society of St. Stephen the Great (SSG). SSG, as regular readers may recall, was taken over by the Commissioners earlier this year, and a settlement reached with former staff who had been unfairly dismissed.

At least 2 shops are up for sale. Durham remains the only shop in operation by the Brewer brothers, the SSG owners (now trading under a new name in a ruse to avoid paying their creditors). It's still odd that the CC haven't taken Durham over as well, but the Cathedral have given notice on the shop, so it will be closed by April 2010 whatever happens, and hopefully reopened under newer and better management.

Having said that, there may not be many assets to realise at Durham, as a look at the shelves (above) reveals. However, if you're after a 2nd hand car, keep an eye out for this one. Coming soon to an auction near you.

Markets Need Morals 2: the 'Christian Market'

Continuing the marketing theme from yesterdays post, have a look at this collection of Strangest Christian Products. I'm not sure what possesses people to create a pink wax Jesus, though I guess it's the prospect of a ready market.

I know lots of Christians who will try where they can to shop ethically, who give away a good slice of their income, and are generous. However it's also clear that there is a ready 'Christian market' for products, be it yet another live worship CD, or a book franchise, or a repackaged Bible. I'm probably oversensitive to marketing, but if we're going to learn to live on less, it's got to be one of the first 'professions' up against the wall. Either the industry which earns it's keep by persuading us to consume stuff we don't really need doesn't have a future, or we don't have a future.

Markets need morals. There's talk of a new moral code for banks. Wouldn't it be great if Christian business could actually lead by example? I'm sure others will have better ideas, but how about some agreed ground rules across businesses who sell to the Christian market?

For example

1. Any worship song to be recorded a maximum of 3 times on separate CD's, after which it can no longer be used on any other product. Blessed be Your Name is a cracking song, but do we really need it to be available on 10 different worship collections?

2. No author may re-use more than 25% of the title of one book in the title of another. That will avoid the recycled franchises of 'the power of a praying.....' or whatever the latest craze is.

3. A limit on the number of forms any particular idea/title can be marketed in. Thus 'What Would Jesus Do?' can only be available in 2 formats out of wristband, t-shirt, bobble hat, book, CD, exercise DVD, Bible study notes and beermat.

4. A limit on the number of formats any translation of the Bible can be made available in. We do not need 5 different holders, 4 different sizes, in pink for women, blue for men and a black metal box for teens, or 5 different variants of study bible depending on whether you have an NVQ, BSc or PhD in Hebrew. Hardback, paperback and large print seems to work pretty well for every other book on the market.

5. Bans on certain terms being used: e.g. 'the ultimate worship experience' (no, that's when you live your life in 24/7 devotion to God, read Romans 12:1), 'this book will change your life' (no it won't, though you might decide to change a few things as a result of reading it. The agent of change is normally you in partnership with God, not a wad of paper), and any comparisons with CS Lewis.

6. No Jesus dolls. None whatsoever. NO DOLLS.

any other suggestions?

Update: BanksyBoy alerts us to another example.

and Zoomtard notes the size of the turnover in Christian copyright. It's not surprising some people are tempted to try to get 'their' share, but.....

Markets need Morals: Case Study 1, 'Young Writers' by Forward Press

'Markets need Morals', says Gordon Brown. I agree.




Last week our daughter came home with a letter (addressed directly to her, c/o the school) and a certificate telling her she'd won a poetry competition, and that her poem had been specially selected to be published in a special book. £13 to you the proud parents for a softback A5 book with the poem in, and bulk offers if you want to place orders for Christmas for the in-laws.

We were thrilled, and very proud. But something didn't seem quite right. We didn't recall, at the time she entered this competition, there being anything about buying a book.

The following day, we discover that lots of other people in her class have 'won'. It turned out to be every single one of them. This has happened before: another school known to us whose children entered the 'Young Writers' competition, and all 'won'. The book, when it arrived, was a huge disappointment in terms of the quality of the product, and the poems didn't seem to have been 'selected' on merit at all.

There are various things about this I'm not happy with:

- The misleading letter from Young Writers, claiming my daughters poem had been specially selected, when it wasn't.

- The letter addressed directly to our child, basically using the school to distribute a piece of marketing. Any communication through the school should be subject to the schools vetting, but it puts schools in a difficult place if the letters are addressed directly to the children.

- Taking something our child has done and selling it back to us is a particularly grubby bit of marketing. I thought marketing via children was illegal, and if it isn't, it should be. It's particularly cynical to play on parents and childrens feelings of pride - 'our child is in print!' just to make money. Some things are too precious to be traded in.

- The disappointment of the children, when they realise that they haven't 'won', and that everyone seems to have got the same prize.

It looks pretty lucrative: one selection of 'winners' is here - if each person on that list represents a print run of A5 booklets at £13+ a throw, then they must be doing quite well out of it. I tried and failed to find a place on the site which previews the books. No previews or reviews on Amazon either, where they come in at £19.99 a throw.

Forward Press, who have been publishing poetry from the general public for years, and they seem to be quite well thought of by the poetry-writing public. I hope this is an aberration. However, this thread on mumsnet suggests they've been doing it for a while, this thread mentions a similar tactic back in 2005, and this thread raises some important data protection issues concerning information about children held by the school.

What do people think?

SPCK - unfinished business

The SPCK Annual General Meeting is coming up, and the annual report and accounts for 2008-9 are online. There is a passing reference to the former SPCK bookshops:

"SPCK continues to have a number of significant legal issues with Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust in regard to matters connected with the former SPCK Bookshops. The Charity Commission has appointed an Interim Manager for the Trust, and progress is being made." (page 6)

Others have stronger views than I over how much responsibility SPCK should shoulder for handing over their bookshops (and staff, customers, and suppliers) to a family of charlatans, who have unfairly dismissed over 30 former staff, been censured in the US courts for a fraudulent bankrupcty claim, and finally been booted out by the Charity Commissioners.

Some better news for former staff: the report reveals that their pension scheme, which is managed by the CofE pension folks (as far as I can tell), had a big shortfall as a result of the CofE revaluing its pensions (though it was struggling before this). SPCK has started making additional payments into the fund of £285,000 to top it up. This is going to be paid for the next 15 years, and the whole amount has been put on this years balance sheet - £3,832,000.

So though the pension fund has imploded, SPCK are at least doing their bit to support former bookshop staff on this front.

Couple of other things:
- SPCK have nearly £300k in a restricted fund for Newcastle Bible House, which seems to be for the purpose of Christian retailing in Newcastle. What's going to happen to this?
- Do the premises of former bookshops still belong to SPCK, or were they completely made over to the Brewers? The shops, as I understand, were given over with restrictive covenant, and at least one has been sold on by the Brewers for another use. Not sure what the legal situation is here, whether the shops revert to SPCK if the covenant has been transgressed.

How long has Durham Cathedral bookshop got?

...and then there was one...

It sounds like the bookshop formerly known as SPCK Chichester is now closed, which leaves only Durham still under the control of the Brewer brothers. Durham Cathedral have already given them notice to quit - by April next year - but the Charity Commissioners may have other views.

If Chichester has been closed because the CC's deem it to be an asset of the former 'Society of St. Stephen the Great' charity, and therefore part of the tribunal settlement with former staff, then logic suggests that they do the same with Durham. Every other remaining shop in the former SPCK chain is already under Charity Commissioners control.

If you're planning to buy anything from Durham, then you might want to get a move on. The Cathedral want to re-open the shop after they've evicted the Brewers, but I can't see the Commissioners waiting until April 2010. Former staff have been promised full payment of their tribunal settlement within 3 months, so I guess the CC's will be looking to identify assets during that time frame.

And that will be that: the end of the SPCK bookshop chain in its final incarnation. Several former shops have reopened under new management, and places like Durham will probably be viable under proper management, but there's wider issues in Christian bookselling, and this isn't exactly the best time to be starting up a new shop.

Still a stack of ongoing issues:
- if SPCK passed on the shops to the Brewers under a covenant stating that they should continue to operate as Christian bookshops, does that still stand now the Charity Commissioners have taken possession?
- if so, will we have a government agency running a chain of Christian bookshops? (!!??!)
- SPCK themselves have been very quiet for much of the last 2 years, possibly for legal reasons. But having made the decision to hand the bookshops over to Mark and Phil Brewer, there has to be some kind of review of that decision, and some learning of lessons.
- there are other untraced monies, like pension contributions.
- at what point will Phil and Mark Brewer be brought to justice, rather than simply be forced by the courts to cough up what they already owe?

and so on.... please pray for all the folk caught up in this, it's deeply sad, and bookshop staff are caught in an incredibly difficult position.