For the last 25 years, Colin Marshall has been in a position to walk a minute down the road from his church in Auckland, New Zealand, to choose up Christian books and materials from his local Manna Christian bookstore. But come the tip of March, that may now not be the case.
When he first heard the news concerning the closure, the minister of St. John Presbyterian Church said he felt “sadness” greater than the rest. “It’s a mirrored image of the economic realities on the market, I feel as much as anything,” he said.
Bible Society New Zealand, which runs 14 Manna Christian bookstores across the country, has announced that it’s shutting down nearly half of its bookstores—three this month and one other three in May. It’s also shutting down its offices in Wellington and said its services could be consolidated at its head office in Auckland by the tip of March.
The decisions were made “in response to the dynamic challenges the economic climate presents,” and sustaining retail operations at among the stores has been “financially difficult for a while,” the ministry stated in a press release.
Rachel Afeaki, the World Evangelical Alliance’s South Pacific regional general secretary and board member for the New Zealand Christian Network, said the bookstores’ departure was a mirrored image of “the times that we live in.” She said the digital age had a “huge impact” on people wanting to read books, as customers find higher deals online and increasingly embrace digital formats.
In her circle of relatives, she encourages her 4 young boys to read for 20 minutes a day but said it was quite a “struggle” because they were so accustomed to screens. Even for herself, Afeaki received three books last Christmas to read, but she laughed that she was still attempting to get through one. “But it’s easy enough for me to read off my phone, it’s easy enough for me to take heed to an audio[book] or a podcast because I’m moving, I’m on the go, I’m driving.”
Stewarding resources well
Manna Christian Stores began in 1972 with a store in Invercargill in New Zealand’s South Island with a goal to partner with churches and native communities and supply Bible and Christian resources, in response to its website. Growing into 14 stores throughout New Zealand, it ran workshops and conferences to coach leaders and equip believers, in addition to partnering with mission groups to spread the gospel.
Image: Courtesy of Jessie Chiang / Edits by CT
In 2017, it joined with Bible Society New Zealand to form the Bible Society New Zealand Group, with a goal to “place a Bible in every empty hand to succeed in and fill empty hearts in all places,” its website stated.
Last December, Bible Society New Zealand’s chief executive Neels Janse van Rensburg told the Otago Daily Times that the bookstore chain hadn’t been profitable for “some years.” He pointed to a rise in constructing leases in multiple locations after the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to rising paper prices and international freight costs that make selling books in New Zealand costly.
“We need to be good stewards of what we’ve been entrusted with and if we go on down this path, we will not be good stewards,” van Rensburg told the newspaper. “We need to make hard decisions of learn how to save the entire or find yourself ready where you have got to shut the entire.”
The flagship Invercargill store is one in all the stores that will probably be shutting down.
New challenges of disinformation
The reality facing Bible Society New Zealand is one which Christian ministries throughout are grappling with, said Auckland-based Jay Mātenga, head of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Global Witness department.
“[It’s] one in all the things we discovered in missions as we moved increasingly to online as a substitute of hardcopy magazines, because the banks decided now not to just accept checks. … It made it harder for people to donate,” Mātenga said. “There’s an entire raft of changes that folks are having to get used to.”
This also results in challenges of disinformation, he noted. In the past, brick-and-mortar establishments primarily controlled access to Christian resources and will be certain that its books were written by pastors, theologians, and church leaders they believed to be theologically sound.
“Now, all styles of strange ideas are floating around,” Mātenga said. “Even pastors are having difficulty in attempting to help guide people right into a way more robust, well-researched truth.”
The web and its expanse of knowledge has each empowered Christians to do their very own research and opened latest avenues of learning. But for those lacking training or experience to discern information well, that freedom also can turn into a challenge.
“Unfortunately, this plays into the entire elitist forms of attitudes. … Those with less education particularly in theology would argue, ‘Well, theologians and Christian leaders are only an elitist group.’” He argued a really strong, robust, and sometimes long training process allows theologians to have the opportunity to evaluate what is useful or unhelpful for Christlike development.
With this reality in mind, it’s essential for churches themselves to have well-stocked libraries for his or her congregation to make use of, Mātenga said.
Manna stores will still have a digital presence—Bible Society has said it stays “resolute” in its commitment to serving customers and that Manna’s online shop would proceed operating to make sure access to its resources and services.
Finding latest owners
Bible Society New Zealand was not available for comment for this text, but in its announcement said the selections were made after “long and prayerful consideration.”
Mātenga believed the closure of Bible Society’s Wellington-based office was because of sound business practices quite than other reasons comparable to lack of donations. “I mean, Auckland’s [size] is just so large,” he said, citing access to international transport hubs and the provision of staff. He noted these were his observations as an outsider.
Bible Society said it recognized the “profound impact” the closures would have on its staff affected by the changes and the communities it served and said that it could “carry this responsibility with the utmost empathy and understanding.”
While the digital age brought advantages, there have been still numerous individuals who preferred physical books, said Joel Shoaf, pastor of Bay Baptist Church in Napier, a city on the eastern coast of New Zealand’s North Island. One of the stores hit by the closures is the Hastings shop, only a few 20-minute drive from his church.
“We’ve ordered many, many, many books from them … so it’s going to be sad to not have the opportunity to try this locally,” said Shoaf.
It’s also the one Christian bookstore within the immediate area for the roughly 160,000 people who live in Napier and Hastings. Fellow Napier pastor Rangi Pou, who leads Potter’s House Church, agreed, noting that other bookstores in Napier sold little or no Christian material.
Pou said some church groups in the realm run shops that generally stock a few Bibles and other books donated by the congregation. “But aside from that, I don’t know of anywhere else where you may walk in and just buy Christian books.” The next closest Manna store is in Palmerston North, which is almost a two-and-a-half hour drive from Napier.
Bible Society asked for offers to purchase any of the stores, saying that outside involvement could possibly be “crucial” in preserving the “essence of those community spaces.”
Pou said his congregation was not in a financial position to purchase the shop, though there have been other larger churches in the realm that probably did have the capability.
“But it’s a financial decision,” Pou said. “No one goes to buy anything that doesn’t become profitable. It is a business.”
