Great deals at Eden.co.uk / Shop Christian

I have a confession to make. I've succumbed to online shopping for my Christian stuff. But before you gasp at my serious U-turn on what was a firm principle to keep Christian Bookstores open by actually shopping in them, the online shop I use is (as far as I'm aware) Christian and, quite frankly, extremely competitive in price. Boo-yah! to Amazon, evil bookstore killers ;)

Anyway... The website for Eden is incredibly easy to navigate and very communicative. For example, it'll tell you if the item will reach you by Christmas or not, so you can avoid severe pre-Christmas anxiety by knowing before you click the 'check out' button whether your prezzies will arrive on time. Handy. You can also listen to samples of CD tracks. I was totally vegging out to my 30 seconds worth of Taize. What's more, if you spend more than £5 you'll get FREE DELIVERY!! As a valued customer I also just got a voucher for money off my next order. This site is just TOO GOOD!!

But don't be a stranger to the old-fashioned way of shopping for your Christian books either. Christian bookstores not only provide a great variety of books and goods but also have a warm, welcoming feel that acts as the hub of the Christian community between Sundays. Your local Christian bookstores need you too - especially CLC, whose sole aim is to bring the gospel and Christian Literature to remote areas of the world and, as such, relies on the sales of its books to fund its missions. Their staff are missionaries themselves, volunteering their time to keep the overheads to a minimum and the funding for missions at a maximum.

The Christian retail industry in North America has already taken a hit due to the migration of customers away from its doors and into secular stores that offer Christian literature at highly competitive prices alongside mainstream publications. The Christian Retail industry simply cannot compete with this market and has had to diversify in order to make its stores more 'appealing' and profitable. Incorporating cafes or coffee shops into their stores has been one way store-owners in the US and Canada have kept their businesses alive. In many ways they've had little choice since mainstream stores like WAL-MART and Costco started stocking vast quantities of popular books like Purpose Driven Life, Battlefield of the Mind and The Shack for hugely discounted prices - prices that Christian retailers cannot match. Add to that the availability of many titles on internet shopping sites like Amazon and you've got a recipe for the demise of the Christian retail industry.

At one point it looked as though the UK might head down the same road with shops like Tesco doing a similar thing in stocking copies of The Shack at marked-down prices. But this seems to be a one-off. Fortunately for UK Christian retailers the mainstream bookstores carry very few Christian titles, unlike their North American counterparts. However, we are already seeing the detrimental effect of the recession hit certain distributors, such as IBS-STL. The future of Wesley Owen books is hanging in the balance as a result of the financial trouble affecting the owners of STL.

So I reaffirm my plea to you: Shop Christian and keep this industry alive. Make good use of your Christian bookstore and if there isn't one local to you, use Christian internet shops like Eden.co.uk. CLC has an online shop too. Use it or lose it.

Finally, when you're looking for a Christian book pay the going rate for it. When we talk about 'worth' and 'value' our mind immediately connects it with money. But I believe many Christian books have the power to change our lives for the better. In that sense, their worth is beyond the confines of a wallet. Keep that in mind when you wonder whether you could get the book cheaper online at Amazon. Being a 'good steward' of God's resources doesn't always mean shafting the author and retailer in pursuit of the cheaper price. Consumerism and Christianity are not the best partners. Let's not sacrifice our friends for the sake of our wallets.