Author name: 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respondents who told Christian Retailing they had withdrawn an item.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.