What do the changes in Christian Retail Bode for me?
I just finished watching Michael’s keynote address at the Thomas Nelson Open House and read of some recent developments at Nelson relative to changing models and reallocation of resources. It seems that while demand for Christian content is increasing, the traditional models for meeting that demand are facing cutbacks!
I have to contemplate similar obstacles as I work through delivering my learning curriculum to the missions community around the world. The challenge is, delivering learning, Christian resources and scripture content — including Bibles and books — to the English speaking people outside of the US, and foreign language speaking in the US or outside their home country. The need is great, and I am driven by the desire to provide resources to the missions community wherever they are located around the world, in the language needed, at the exact time it is needed! I have written about Snowfall solutions here before, and I am so excited because of the opportunities they give me to meet needs.
Imagine a context where I can write anything, really, and have the content in a web environment, but almost without effort, I can re-purpose it into a book, or vice versa. Now, it doesn’t matter whether or not someone has computer access — I can get them what they need wherever they are and at their best level of technology. If they can go online, they can read, do learning, and even join a community around that learning. If they can’t go online, the resource can come to them as a book or learning manual, easily and quickly.
This is all made possible as a result of Snowfall’s commitment to applying technologies and business/ministry models towards making Bibles and scripture-related resources available to people in their mother tongue, regardless of where they are located around the world – at their time of need. As MIchael Hyatt points out in his keynote, demand for Christian resources is growing significantly. There is no better time to be about the task of providing learning and scripture resources to a world that is hungry for answers.
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(In an effort to be transparent, I need to disclose that I am part of the Snowfall Companies, first as an investor, and second, as the Technology Evangelist.)