Christian Retailing

Industry leaders have paid tribute to longtime Christian publisher and CBA founding member Robert L. Kregel, who died Sunday (June 24) after a brief illness. Regarded as a pioneering giant in the Christian product industry, the former president of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Kregel Inc. was 92.

After his father died in 1939, Kregel took over the family's used book business at age 20 and expanded the company into a publishing house and bookstore chain. In 1949, he began publishing classic reprints under the Kregel Publications name. Kregel Inc. now includes Kregel Publications, its Spanish imprint, Editorial Portavoz, and two Kregel Parable Christian Stores in the Grand Rapids area.

Kregel, who served a two-year term as CBA's president from 1960-1962, attended the association's first meeting at Chicago's LaSalle Hotel in 1950.

Christian Western novelist Stephen Bly, winner of a Christy Award, died June 9 in Lewiston, Idaho, after a five-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 66.

Bly, who wrote more than 100 books and hundreds of articles, poems and short stories won the 2002 Christy Award for Western Novel for The Long Trail Home (Broadman & Holman). Some of his other novels included The Senator's Other Daughter (Crossway Books); Memories of a Dirt Road Town (Broadman & Holman); One Step Over the Border (Center Street); and Throw the Devil Off the Train (Center Point).

More than half of Christian retailers have pulled a product from their shelves in the past year because of concerns about its content.

Questionable language, unsound doctrine or an author or artist who had fallen were among the most common reasons cited by the 54 percent of respondents who told Christian Retailing they had withdrawn an item.

There has been heightened general-public attention on God's Word this year due to the King James Version's 400th anniversary, according to the world's leading publisher of KJV Bibles.

"Interest in this landmark occasion is widespread and has been acknowledged in major national press," Gary Davidson, vice president and group publisher for Bibles at Thomas Nelson, notes in an Industry Forum guest column in the June issue of Christian Retailing.

He referenced a recent New York Times editorial that observed: "'It's barely possible to overstate the significance of this Bible. Hundreds of millions have been sold. ... To Christians all around the world, it is still the ancestral language of faith.'"

Soul Surfer, the biopic telling of teen Bethany Hamilton's remarkable return to surfing after losing an arm in a shark attack, is to release on DVD Aug. 2.

The 106-minute, PG-rated drama features AnnaSophia Robb as Hamilton with Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt as her parents. With singer Carrie Underwood making her acting debut in the film, Soul Surfer was heavily promoted to the faith-based community on its theatrical release and saw a positive response, said Dave Mechem, sales manager for Affirm Films/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

"The biggest thing we were excited about was the CinemaScore rating," he said. "It was an A-plus, the first film to get that this year." With a production budget of $18 million, the film took twice that at the box office within a month of release.

After more than a decade together, GRAMMY-nominated and Dove Award-winning David Crowder Band will disband after its current tour, the group has announced on its Web site.

The group's The 7 Tour "will be our last as a band," the posting said. "None of us is sure what's next, but we're not afraid. ... And we're sure that music will play a role in the future for most, if not all, of us, since, well, we wouldn't know how to not have it a part of our lives."

Known as "Mr. Bible," industry veteran William "Bill" Reynolds died May 18 at his home in Northridge, Calif. He was 87.

After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Reynolds began his career selling books in 1951 at Whittemore's in Boston. During the ensuing decades, Reynolds sold Bibles for J.B. Lippincott, Holman Bible Publishers and Broadman-Holman.

On retiring from Broadman-Holman, Reynolds worked part-time as a volunteer in the Bible department of Valley Book and Bible Stores in Van Nuys, Calif., according to Gospel Light Marketing Manager David Wilke, whose family owned the stores from 1952-2009.

After some health issues, Reynolds left the store, but worked as a chaplain at his church visiting shut-ins, led Bible studies in Los Angeles County jails and distributed Gideon Bibles. Reynolds "never said no to any request to serve the Lord," Wilke told Christian Retailing. "He was the most positive person I have ever met. He prayed with everyone he sold a Bible to."

In response to Rob Bell's controversial Love Wins, David C. Cook is rushing out former pastor and best-selling author Francis Chan's third book.

Scheduled for release July 5, Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity and the Things We Make Up "promises to be both controversial and confessional, directly addressing a variety of views on hell, the Bible and God," Cook said.

Co-written by Bible college professor Preston Sprinkle, the book will offer a comprehensive and thorough study on God's character, Chan said. Erasing Hell "is not a book that tells you 'here's what you ought to believe,'" Chan said in a video trailer for the book. "It's a book that helps you think through all the evidence out there—all of what Scripture teaches—and come to your own conclusions. ... We can't afford to be wrong about this issue."

For the second consecutive year, Desafío del amor, the Spanish translation of The Love Dare by Fireproof movie-making brothers Stephen and Alex Kendrick (published in English by B&H Books in 2008), won the Harold Kregel Book of the Year award for 2010, during the Spanish Evangelical Products Association (SEPA) Awards.

The winners were named last night in Miami at the 19th annual Expolit convention, the largest trade show in the U.S. for Spanish-language Christian products.

Published by B&H Español, Desafío del amor was also recognized as the Harold Kregel 2009 Book of the Year award for "most inspiring and impactful book." "Sales of the book peaked in the U.S. around the time the movie Fireproof came out, but in Latin America the wave didn't arrive till later," said B&H Publishing Group Vice President of International Sales Jim Cook, noting that more than 400,000 copies of the book have been sold. B&H Español also won the Best Catalog.