We need to close the gap between what we sell and how we really live

Something churned inside me recently when I came across this advice to churches considering opening a bookstore: “If the area’s already well-served by a Christian retailer, the church should give prayerful consideration … to the possible impact on the Christian businessperson who owns the local store.”

I felt the stress faced by local store owners and the church leaders as they seek to be on the front line of ministry together while balancing the budget.

A competitive spirit is just one loathsome foe in the menagerie of diabolical imps you and I fight against as we—the members of the Christian retail industry—desperately seek to live the messages we hope will sell.

I know about the competitive spirit. If I’m brutally honest, I have to admit that I’ve gotten caught up in the industry as I watch my fellow best-selling authors for teen girls progress with rapt self- consciousness.

Though I love them dearly, I am in a constant battle with my flesh.

Today I blasted off a flow-of-consciousness e-mail to a list of best-selling co-laborers. “Frankly, girls … you and I teach teens to avoid being mean girls, but in my heart is always a competitive spirit,” I wrote.

“(There, I said it!) Either I am feeling like I’m ‘not enough’ because you are outselling me or I am feeling like I’m ‘all that’ because I’m at an event with teen girls squashing me to get an autograph.”

I spilled my guts.

I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of honesty that flowed into my inbox.

Vicki Courtney, winner of the 2008 Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s Christian Book Award (Children & Youth) for Teen Virtue: Confidential (B&H Books/B&H Publishing Group), wrote back: “Even as someone who writes and speaks on this topic, I struggle with my own ‘inner mean girl’ rearing her ugly head from time to time.”

I had to ask if she ever struggled with jealousy in the industry. She was candid in her answer: “Ouch! Absolutely! God spoke truth into my heart through a friend of mine.

“She was speaking on Matthew 9:37—The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.’ She made the simple statement that there are ‘many rows to hoe in the harvest.’ And then she said, ‘Hoe your own row and quit worrying about the person in the row next to you!’ ”

I don’t know about you, but it gets hard for me to remember that whole “same team” thing when I’m worrying about making payroll for my staff. I can’t tell if I’m the valiant warrior of God who serves beside my sisters, or if I’m the fearful, territorial wimp worried about the bottom line.

I end up sometimes crying out in my spirit: “Will the real Dannah Gresh please stand up?”

Best-selling author Susie Shellenberger, former editor of Brio magazine, who is currently launching a new teen girls magazine called SUSIE Mag, admitted to the same struggle to live what she teaches.

“My greatest area of being un-Christlike is my impatience,” she told me. “I’ve called my accountability partner on the way to a speaking engagement and said: ‘I’m really angry right now, and I’m on my way to speak to teens about holiness. I need to confess this and pray through it before I get behind the microphone.’ ”

I cannot tell you how it made me feel OK to have Susie speak with such transparency. Apparently the real Dannah Gresh is the one who wants to serve God beside her sister, but often needs to call her accountability partner.

Can you identify?

Shaunti Feldhahn can. She’s sold more than 1 million copies of her books and speaks to our shared audience of teen girls through For Young Women Only (Multnomah Books).

She candidly piped in: “I don’t have to be told that ‘the human heart is deceitfully wicked’—I recognize it every day in myself in this industry! I recognize it when I find myself getting a bit jealous over the fact that someone else got that speaking engagement I would have loved, or see that someone else’s ‘competing’ book has sold a zillion more copies.

“I have to instantly and sincerely pray for blessing and favor for anyone I might have those feelings about, since I know that God will use that in their life and my heart!”

Oh, the juicy stuff that transpired in our little best-selling “inner mean girls” e-mail forum. We took time to cleanse our hearts and got things right in this little corner of the Christian retail industry.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this whole Christian retail thing just works better if we live it better than we sell it.

For example:

As we share Dave Ramsey’s books on biblical finances, can we say with certainty that we are living above the weight of debt in our ministry finances?

When we encourage a weepy wife with a copy of The Love Dare, can we say that we’ve been protecting our own marriages?

Romans 2:21-24 admonishes us with no amount of tenderness: “You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? …

“You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: ‘God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’ ”

We have to be willing to examine our lives to see if there is any potential for hypocrisy. If there is a disconnect between what we are selling and how we are living, our best contribution to the body of Christ is sitting on the sidelines for some rest or restoration.

Leslie Ludy, who penned When God Writes Your Love Story (Multnomah Books) with her husband, Eric, weighed in on this.

When I asked if they ever struggled with living out what they write about, she replied: “A few years ago, Eric and I decided to pull away from full-time touring and speaking.

“We knew that so much speaking was causing our marriage and relationship with Christ to get a second-place focus, and we were beginning to feel the results of burnout.

“It was hard to walk away, but it established a very important principle—if the Truth is not first real in our own lives, we have no business teaching it to someone else.”

If you ask me, that’s living out the message.

Now that you’ve read these confessions of best-selling inner mean girls gone mild, let me ask you something with an extra dose of tenderness:

What does your corner of the industry look like?

• Prev
• Next