 annual meeting, Ben Mandrell, CEO and president of Lifeway Christian Resources, responded to a messenger’s inquiry regarding whether the entity would ever bring back the brick and mortar bookstores.){kind=link}
On Wednesday at the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) annual meeting, Ben Mandrell, CEO and president of Lifeway Christian Resources, responded to a messenger’s inquiry regarding whether the entity would ever bring back its brick and mortar bookstores.
The messenger expressed the desire for at least “a handful of stores in some of our larger areas that we can point people to gospel-centered resources.”
In 2019, Lifeway announced plans to close all of its 170 brick and mortar stores due to a lack of traffic and sales. Thus, Lifeway shifted to an entirely online strategy.
“It’s a great question, and one that I have thought a lot about,” Mandrell said. “I have studied the Barnes and Noble movement very closely. We would love to bring the stores back.”
“Believe me, there is not a person in this room that doesn’t love bookstores more than this guy right here,” said Mandrell.
Mandrell said that Lifeway’s bookstores “weren’t just stores. They were counseling centers.”
“When people came to a Lifeway Christian store, they were often needing a resource. Their marriage was hurting, they [were parenting], they wanted to come and find a Bible that was just right for them,” he continued.
“We loved our stores,” said Mandrell, “but to be clear on this, Lifeway has never abandoned anything that the local church has not first abandoned.”
The reason Lifeway had to “close the stores is that many of you, many of our Southern Baptists, were coming into our stores, looking at products, and purchasing those elsewhere,” Mandrell added.
“We wanted to keep those stores open. We spent two years doing everything we possibly could to save the stores,” Mandrell said. “But in the end, it was either a future of Lifeway or not, and the only way going forward was to let go of brick and mortar.”
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