Prayer, Praise, and Piety in the Psalms

I would like to thank my friend Jason Button for his hard work in providing an excellent intro to the Psalms this month as a guest blogger. He has provided some very helpful resources. Here are links to all his posts in that series:

• Prayer, Praise, and Piety: An Introduction to the Psalter
• Tuesday Miscellanies: Studying the Psalter
• Piety in the Psalter
• Prayer in the Psalter
• Praise in the Psalter

Guest Blogger, Feb. 1-8, 2008

No miscellanies or resource pages this Tuesday, but an announcement:

On Friday, Jason Button will begin guest-blogging through February 8. I have benefited from Jason's writing and from his service as editor of Sharper Iron book reviews (both as a reader of them and a book reviewer). He will be sharing some fruit from his study on the Psalms - writing original articles as well as pointing us to resources to help us understand and apply the Psalms. I've received a sneak peek, and I am certainly looking forward to what he has to share with us. Here's a little biographical info. on Jason, taken from www.sharperiron.org:

Jason Button received a B.A. in Bible from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and has begun work on an M.A. in Theology. He serves as the Book Review Editor for SharperIron and is the creator of TheoSource, a project to compile comprehensive lists of recommended books for Bible study. Currently, he is a layman serving in various roles at West Ashley Independent Baptist Church (Charleston, SC). He is married to Tiffany, and they have two children, Caris Joelle and Asa Livingstone.

Selling Books in the Church: Joy in Exhaustion

This is the sixth post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This post details a small part of God’s goodness to me during my service as Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

Why Am I Selling Books at Church?

I first volunteered to serve at the bookstall when the Deaconess who oversaw the area prior to me requested help with inventory. Nearly every Sunday afternoon, I would count all of the books. This took a couple of hours at first, but closer to an hour as I became more familiar with the books and their locations.

Shortly before my predecessor’s term ended (Deacons and Deaconesses are not eligible to serve consecutive terms at CHBC), I was asked to consider serving as the Deacon of Bookstall. I didn’t fully understand the time commitment, and I was entering my final semester of law school, but I agreed because I was eager to take advantage of an opportunity to serve.

Even without deep reflection, my heart is full of joy when I think of serving at the bookstall. Looking back more closely on nearly three years of service in this role, I see great evidence of God’s goodness to me. At times, law school exams, the bar exam, or busyness at work made bookstall service seem an unwise use of time. But, God has been pleased to upend those thoughts in several ways.

First, God has encouraged me to be faithful by allowing me to see the faithful examples of many of my fellow believers. It’s hard to be too impressed with my occasional service when it often gave me opportunity to see the more demanding and sacrificial efforts of others. Sure, I may have been receiving book orders for a couple of hours on a Thursday night, but as I left the Elders were just assembling to spend hours praying for and otherwise serving our local body.

Second, God has encouraged me by the openness with which others have shared the ways God has blessed them through the bookstall. It’s hard to begrudge showing up for church an hour early to put stock a few books when you learn that some of those books are being purchased for and carried to believers around the world or unbelieving friends and family members around the country. It’s hard to jealously guard my time when a brother shares the way God has exposed to him the sin that has been damaging his marriage.

Third, God has taught me through the content of the books we sell. I’m a bibliophile and it’s hard for me to be around good books without wanting to make them mine. So, I’ve purchased and read many of the books on our bookstall. And I’ve benefited mightily from them.

Sure exhaustion sets in when you’re pricing and shelving the three hundredth book of an order. But it’s an exhaustion that brings joy; it’s the joy of a job well done, of seeing one small part of life well spent.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.

Selling Books in the Church: Welcome to the 80s

This is the fifth post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This post walks through the implementation of a basic electronic point of sale system.

Do We Need a Bar Code Scanner?

As I mentioned in the prior post, we made do without an electronic sales system for ten years. What pushed us to spend the money to implement one? In our case there were two factors.

First, based on the advice of our attorneys, we began to collect and remit sales tax for books sold at the bookstall. Prior examination of this issue had considered only whether we owed income tax on books sold (no, we don’t make money off the books) or whether we needed to pay sales tax on books purchased (no, we’re buying for resale).

Second, our sales reached a point at which it was difficult to handle particularly busy times using our paper-based system. Particularly during 9Marks Weekenders and on holiday weekends, we found that lines were long and accuracy decreased. In the past several weeks, we have seen an increase in accuracy and a dramatic increase in transaction speed where multiple items are purchased.

We installed a fairly basic POS system. We chose Wasp’s QuickStore Standard software though, in retrospect, I should have chosen a package tailored for book sales. We also purchased a very inexpensive tower computer, a bar code scanner, receipt printer, and label printer. We purchased label creation software from Wasp (to create and print labels for items that do not have barcodes), and we purchased a 19” LCD monitor. When the stand was removed from the monitor, it fit snugly into the top of the lockable media cart we purchased to hold the system.

It would be easier to install a system like this when a bookstall is started, but it may not immediately make sense to invest over $1500 in this sort of hardware and software. To transition from the paper-based system to the electronic system, I spent a full Friday and two of us spent a full Saturday calculating new prices, re-pricing books, manually entering data into the new system, and assembling, installing, and testing. Of course, this will take more or less time depending on the current stock levels (we had about 800 books spread across 300 titles) and the state of your data before the transition. Had we previously tracked publishers, we could have imported most of the data using a comma delimited file.

As expensive as this sort of system may seem to those who have no book ministry or who have only a small book table; my hope is that our experience demonstrates that an electronic system may make sense at some point down the road – and that it can be done without transforming your ministry into a full-fledged bookstore.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.

Selling Books in the Church: Selling it Old Skool

This is the fourth post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This post looks at the practical implementation of a low cost sales and inventory system.

So How Do We Get Started?

When I became Deacon of Bookstall, we were a paper and spreadsheet operation. Though we have recently moved to an electronic point of sale system, most of my experience is with the low tech system described here.

The most expensive item we used was a cash box (available from office supply stores for approximately $20). We keep $100 in low bills in the cash box to make change. When we run low on low bills, I run to the bank during the week and bring back low bills for the next opening.

Sales are marked with a simple hash mark next to the title of the book on a sales sheet. This sheet lists all of the titles stocked on the bookstall, sorted alphabetically by author’s last name. When the bookstall volunteers balance sales at closing, they will manually multiply these hash marks by the price of the book (also on the sales sheet) and then manually total sales of all items.

The last page of this sales sheet (including total sales and signatures of the volunteers) is remitted to the church administrator with all payment above the $100 left in the cash box. The entire sales sheet is used to manually update a spreadsheet used to track inventory levels. Physically counts are regularly performed to correct discrepancies between the spreadsheet and the physical stock.

If the spreadsheet has recently been reconciled with the physical stock, orders can be placed based on the inventory reported in the spreadsheet. Over time, the spreadsheet will offer insight into reordering as it shows which books sell more rapidly. Experience also teaches which books are more popular at certain times of the year or for discipling relationships.

The primary advantage of this method is that it is very inexpensive. The primary challenge is that it is subject to greater human error in making change, marking titles sold, and entering sales data manually into the spreadsheet. Calculation of sales tax may, depending on the tax law in your state, also be difficult with the system described above. Still, our bookstall (which started as a book table) effectively used this method for over ten years. We switched to the electronic system described in the next post only a month ago.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.

Selling Books in the Church: Business or Ministry?

This is the third post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This post will consider whether a church bookstall should be operated as a business or ministry.

Are You Selling as a Business or a Ministry?

Most churches will see their book sales as a ministry. The difficulty is in making it clear that your book table is a ministry. Following are a few aspects of our bookstall that make it look more like a ministry than a business.

First, we sell at cost. We take our cost for the book, including shipping and the sales tax we must collect and remit to the government, rounded to the nearest dollar. We smooth these prices to get as close as possible to our goal of neither making nor losing money on the sale of these books. The natural result of this is that we lose money. More accurately, the church subsidizes the bookstall by including it as a line item in the annual budget. The loss is a result of shrinkage (presumably, some people do not understand that the books are not free and others sometimes take a book intending to pay, but forget). Selling at cost is also made possible by relying entirely on volunteers to run the bookstall.

Second, we do not close off the books. No business leaves its wares unwatched and accessible while it is closed. But, though we encourage people to purchase books only when the bookstall is open, books can be taken and paid for when the church building is open, but the bookstall closed.

Third, we give books away. We make CCEF booklets available for free. We do note our cost and some people pay for them. Our pastors believe these to be particularly helpful counseling booklets that touch on sensitive topics and we are happy for people to take them without paying if they promise to read them. We give away more than 1500 of these booklets each year. Also, one book on our bookstall is thought to be a valuable, but overly expensive, evangelistic tool. The church subsidizes the book by charging far less for it than it costs us. And, though not strictly part of the bookstall ministry, our church annually allocates funds to “pastoral accounts.” Pastors frequently pull books off the bookstall, give them away, and charge them to these accounts.

None of these points is made to imply that a church should never run a bookstore as a business or even that a book business could not adopt some of these procedures. The point is just that the purpose of your book ministry or business should be defined from the start and evident in your practice.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.

Selling Books in the Church: Selecting Books

This is the second post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This post will explore the considerations that surround book selection.

Which Books Should You Select?

Foundationally, churches should sell only books that are theologically accurate. Of course, other than the Bibles you sell, your stock is not inspired. But, it is important that the books sold not be likely to lead readers into error. At our bookstall, all books are selected by the pastors. This allows the purchaser to have a high level of confidence in the theological accuracy and pastoral benefit of the books.

Second, books should be selected for their broad helpfulness. Maybe someone in your church is incredibly interested in the details of the Montanism . . . but your limited shelf space is better used for a title on cultivating humility or emboldening evangelism.

Third, books should be selected to teach on a range of theological issues and across a range of human experience. Our bookstall is divided into the following sections: Bible Study Aids, Bibles and Hymnals, Biographies, Devotional Aids, Christ and Culture, Christian Living, Church and Worship, Commentaries, History, Marriage and Family, Theology, and books our pastor has written or contributed to. Some of these sections contain only a few titles – others contain more than fifty titles. The important thing, regardless the size of your book ministry, is to understand that not all people struggle to understand or apply the same truths. So, before you add a fifth title on the sovereignty of God, look to see whether you have any help for those struggling with their marriage, parenting, or suffering. Look at the books as you look at your people – pastorally.

Fourth, select some books that are old. Some of my best friends are dead – and I’ve met them at our bookstall. I’ll not have the opportunity in this life to meet Jeremiah Burroughs (d. 1646), but just last evening he was teaching me about contentment. And earlier this year, Thomas Watson (d. 1686) opened Romans 8:28 to me. Not everyone will choose an older book, but provide an opportunity for your people to sit at the knee of faithful departed saints.

Finally, include some books that are challenging. You’ll not want to turn your church book ministry into an academic bookstore, but there is a place for a few works that will challenge those who desire more. You will probably carry and sell these titles in smaller quantity, but it can be helpful to have a few on hand.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.

Selling Books in the Church: Why Sell Books at Church?

This is the first post in a six part series on establishing and maintaining a church book table, stall, or store. Many of the ideas and experiences are based on the bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC where I have been blessed to serve as Deacon of Bookstall for over two and a half years. This introductory post will make a case for a book ministry in a church.

In the next section, Selecting Books, we’ll cover just that. Third, in Business or Ministry?, we’ll think about different models for books sales at church and the implications of those models. In the fourth and fifth installments, Selling it Old Skool and Welcome to the 80s, I’ll explain two different ways we’ve handled the practical details at CHBC. I’ll wrap up in Joy in Exhaustion ­– a personal testimony to God’s goodness to me as I’ve served as Deacon of Bookstall.

This series is not meant to be prescriptive. You’ll find not everything will work as well in your setting as it does in ours. Still, I hope it will help some churches and church leaders think through the benefits that might be had by having good books at hand.

Why Sell Books at Church?

I’m not sure what the motivations were when the CHBC Bookstall was started (long before my wife and I arrived). But, over the past four years, I’ve seen at least three benefits of a book ministry in a local church.

First, having books on hand allows a pastor to exercise discernment for the benefit of the congregation. For a variety of reasons, not all believers are able to well discern which books and authors are reliable guides. Pastors should be better situated to make such judgments, and to make such judgments across a wider range of topics.

Second, having books available for purchase in the church increases their accessibility. Many people, including church members and visitors, think more of spiritual matters when they are in the church than when they are about their daily business. Placing in the church something they can take with them to spur continued meditation on spiritual matters can be a great aid. In addition, not everyone lives near a bookstore that carries a good stock of theologically reliable books. Not everyone is adept in using the internet for such purchases. Finally, the availability of books in the church is particularly beneficial to pastors as they counsel others at the church. Our pastors frequently recommend or even give books from our bookstall for the benefit of others.

Third, a bookstall is a great location for fellowship. In our church, the bookstall is located at the back of our auditorium. At the end of the service, we offer coffee and cookies and encourage people to stay around and talk. The bookstall provides a less intimidating location for visitors and less thoroughly relationshipped members to meet others and, hopefully, begin the process of becoming known by others. It’s easier to ask the person standing next to you if they know of a good book on stewardship than it is to tell that same person that you are struggling with greed. But the question may naturally lead to the admission as the relationship develops.

J.A. Ingold is Deacon of Bookstall at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. You can see what he’s reading at Bookpress.