LifeWay recently announced plans to close three stores on Southern Baptist seminary campuses. The stores at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri; Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina; and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, will close before summer.

The employees affected by the closures have reportedly been encouraged to apply for positions at other LifeWay stores and, if they choose to leave the company, they will receive severance benefits. LifeWay stores operating at other Baptist seminaries, such as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana, are not at risk of closing.

Cossy Pachares, vice president of LifeWay's retail division, explained the rationale for the closings.

“LifeWay created our campus stores to help seminary students acquire the resources necessary for their academic studies,” Pachares said. “Over the last five years or so, students have been migrating more to digital, rental and online options for many of their textbook and scholarly resource needs. This is not a bad thing. We know these new options are helpful to students since they can be more cost effective and powerful. … While we are excited about these new options for seminary students, the changes have, unfortunately, had a significant impact on our ability to continue to operate these stores. … The closings are very difficult decisions and ones we delayed as long as we could. But we have worked with executive leadership at each of the seminaries, and they understand our situation with the stores."

The Southwestern Seminary store will close Feb. 29, the Southeastern store Apr. 30 and the Midwestern store May 31.

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