Licence for the SPCK name is withdrawn from the bookshops

May I draw your attention to two comments that have been left on my site today:

Pax Vobiscum:

So, SPCK's AGM came and went with nary a murmur. The usual suspects in the Governing Body got away without censure on their appalling decision to hand over £6million worth of assets to be systematically stripped by the brothers Brewer. Several shops have declared UDI, including the brightest and best star in the firmament. SPCK has agreed not to continue with the license for the name and those shops where SSG does not hold the freehold stand a good chance of fading into distant memory. Meanwhile, those shops where SSG does hold the freehold could be in for a very interesting time indeed. It is enough to make you weep into your incense-infused orthodox coffee, served in a an agate cup hand-carved by nuns in Texas.

Let us hope that the shops that go independent can build a good, workable model to keep resourcing their communities - we must support them where we can. Meanwhile, prayers and cheery words for all the staff who are left.

Thomas:

Come Wednesday, when the current license expires, they will no longer be able to use the SPCK name on their shops. What name they do trade under remains to be seen - I withhold offering suitable suggestions!! The Brewers have managed to systematically strip the leading Christian bookshops of their reputation, their standing, the respect they held amongst clergy, laity and the wider Christian publishing and retail trade, as well as completely destroying the morale of, or losing altogether, the highly experienced and dedicated staff who have built up the reputation However, the blame cannot be placed entirely on the shoulders of the Brewers. Those within SPCK who took the original decision to hand over their assets to a group of unknowns are also to blame.

Mark Brewer did not get his wish to be elected to SPCK at their AGM, in fact I am told the motion was not even put. Furthermore, I am told Simon Kingston and Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester, have both withdrawn from acting as trustees to SSG. Such was the Bishop of Gloucester's assurance 12 months ago that he would serve as a trustee to ensure SSG maintained the reputation of the bookshops. Did not Pilate wash his hands?

A meeting the week before last between 4 of the staff, Mark Brewer and ACAS resulted in, you will not be surprised to hear, nothing constructive. The following Monday, the shops represented by those 4 members of staff had their e-mail disconnected. Suppliers have been told under no circumstances are they to send stock to certain named shops (not that they would do until outstanding bills were paid) two of which are in the process of, or have, negotiated a buyout. Presumably the fate of the remaining shops will be revealed within a matter of weeks, if not days.

Please note that I have no means of verifying the accuracy of every detail of these comments, but I am drawing attention to them as they are both by people who know a great deal more than I do.

SPCK boss steps in to run the Exeter shop

SPCK boss Phil Brewer is running the Exeter SPCK shop himself, according to this report in the Exeter Express and Echo website. This is, if you remember, all to do with the fact that the staff all walked out as they were being made to sign contracts that some staff members have described as 'unsignable'. See the 'Save the SPCK' category on this blog for the whole story over the last year or two.

I know that one or two journalists have been finding it difficult to contact Mr Brewer, the boss of SPCK. Well, here is your chance. Phone up the Exeter shop with an enquiry about the latest brands of incense and it looks as if you might get to speak to the man himself. Actually, you would do well to vary your initial enquiry subjects a bit. Some of you could ask about palm crosses or bulk orders of 'Two ways to live'.

Update: Ruth Gledhill has posted. See also a very interesting comment from (I assume) an insiders perspective by 'Pax Vobiscum' on her previous post.

The staff of SPCK Exeter resign

From the Express and Echo in Exeter:
One of Exeter's oldest shops is facing upheaval after all its staff resigned in a row over new contracts. All seven employees with the SPCK bookshop, in Catherine Street, handed in their notice and are due to work their last day on Saturday.


Of course this won't be news to you if you have been following the comments thread from my last SPCK post where Neil posted the same thing yesterday. I don't know whether other shops are facing a similar situation.

Other SPCK news:
• In Christian Marketplace an article 'Concern rising over SPCK bookshops' which quotes the Church Times article 'SPCK shop staff voice concerns about their future'.
• The Truro shop is apparently closing 'next week' according to a commenter, but I only have second hand knowledge about this.
• Sadly it is not proving possible to order items from certain well-known Christian publishers in certain SPCK branches. I've no idea how widespread this problem is.

The future looks uncertain. In the meantime the best we can do is heed the advice of Richard, a former SPCK bookshop manager who posted in the last comments thread:
Please pray for my former colleagues, especially those still working in the bookshops, and please support them any way you can - cream cakes are always welcome.

Update: Western Morning News - Shop staff resign in contracts row

Someone, please buy the SPCK bookshops

Somebody needs to buy the SPCK chain of bookshops, and quickly.

This is from my friend Neil, who has just handed in his notice:

Handed in my notice just in time, I have found out that our owners want to run each shop with just one person, and as they presented us with an unsignable (by which I mean only an idiot would sign it, not that it is printed on ink-proof paper) contract they will be lucky if they have enough staff left to run any shops at all. It has nearly been a month since we have been allowed to place a stock order and the shop is running out of stuff. In fact I predict that in a few months the shops won't exist at all, hundreds of years of bookselling torn apart in one year, very sad.


Things really are that bad. I know some people reading are not affected by this and so don't really care, but for those who have books / resources / newspapers and suchlike of interest to Anglicans and others it really is bad news.

Wesley Owen? Hymns Ancient and Modern? CPO? Premier? Anyone!

SPCK staff must work Sundays

More odd goings-on have been going on at the SPCK bookshops. Ruth Gledhill has the text of some memos sent out by the management to the shops - see her two posts today: 'If you go down to an SPCK bookshop today' and 'Why
Christians must work on the Sabbath'. The staff are apparently being asked to work on Sundays, greet all customers within 3 seconds, and all sorts of other crazy things.

I've been aware, from various contacts, of some absurd goings-on at SPCK recently, but I hadn't written here for the sake of my highly secret sources, who understandably want to remain nameless and employed. But if true these latest missives really do take, as they say, the biscuit. I suspect the Sunday-working one is illegal too, depending on the fine print.

Meanwhile, I noticed at the Christian Resources Exhibition that the main Anglican publishers have banded together to form AnglicanShop.com. This will be an online shop for Anglican things.


I spoke to one of the new managers of this site at the CRE who just happens to be moving from a certain chain of Christian bookshops, but I can't tell you which one.

Apparently the shop will feature 'interactive' elements. I'm not sure what this means, but perhaps we will be able to talk to each other whilst we are shopping. I suppose it will be a bit like talking to fellow shoppers in Tescos and asking them which particular ready meals they have enjoyed recently.

Update: Ruth has taken down the two posts for some reason. I'll try to find out why.

St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust

My SPCK cartoon appears in this month's Christian Marketplace magazine, which is nice.

I've been keeping an eye on the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust / SPCK story as it intrigues me and I am interested to see what happens. It did not
surprise me to read that the Trust have instructed their shops not to stock the Koran, as they are not overly enthusiastic about the Muslim faith. It remains to be seen whether Christian denominations they also are not terribly enthusiastic about will be less represented or removed from the SPCK shelves.

The controversial 'St Stephen Foundation' website which talks about these dubious denominations in quite strong terms has now been deleted from the internet, although you can still see it via archive.org.

One of the aims of the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust which I hadn't quite noticed until now is to take over at least 47 redundant Church of England Churches, one for each of the 47 churches and monasteries St Stephen the Great built to celebrate his battle victories against the Muslims:

Perhaps of equal or greater significance to this great saint's life is that he built many churches and monasteries, one after each of his 47 successful battles against the Moslems, including many of the most beautiful monuments to Orthodoxy in the entire world.

This struggle for the Faith is being waged primarily by the acquisition of the "redundant" church buildings of the Church of England. In this, its second year, the trust has succeeded in acquiring fee title to its second magnificent church building (both are listed buildings). In the years to come, it aspires to acquire at least 45 more. I find this a fairly unsavoury symbolic gesture I have to say.

I find it all a bit sad as I remain a great fan of the SPCK bookshops themselves.

Update: Joe asked in the comments whether we should stop supporting the SPCK bookshops. My answer is no. I think we should continue to support SPCK shops for the following reasons:

• I think the good the shops and the books sold through them do outweighs the strange and dubious objectives of the owners.
• I want to support the staff, some of whom I know.
• I suspect that once this chain is gone it really is gone and I can't see anything similar replacing it. At least if we continue to support SPCK there remains the chance that it will be taken over by someone we are able to support more wholeheartedly.

The SPCK takeover (continued)

Two good points in the comments from yesterday's post:

Are the shops safeguarded?
Well, yes and no. As Neil pointed out, the SPCK shops are only 'safeguarded' if people keep buying things from them, a point that I should have made.

Who are the people who now run SPCK anyway?
Joe did a bit more digging around than I did yesterday and came up with some interesting snippets of information on the St Stephen Foundation website, which seems to be linked with the St Stephen Trust, the people who have taken over the SPCK shops. Interesting beliefs listed on their 'Why Orthodoxy' page include:
• The Orthodox Church is the only true church:
• Since the time of Saint Peter, the Orthodox Church has remained unaltered with seamless continuity. Established in A.D. 33 at the time of Pentecost, it is the only church true to the Word of God, and therefore, the only one that offers true salvation and eternal life.
• Certain Christians, the precise identity of whom is uncertain (but they could be evangelicals or perhaps protestants generally), are going to hell:
• In the United States of America, people are flocking back to what they believe is Christianity but, in reality, they are being misled by false prophets - a blind man. They are persuaded to join "Feel-Good" churches where they are told they will be saved by making a donation and saying a few simple words. Unfortunately, many of these are "feel good" churches are established just to make the management rich, or where the minister actually believes his own message, they are leading poor misguided souls into eternal damnation - both will fall into the pit.
• The Roman Catholic church is not 'the true church of Christ':
• One hundred and fifty thousand souls convert or revert back to the Roman Catholic faith each year in the USA. In their misguided belief, they assume that this is the true Church of Christ.

As Joe says, how are they going to feel about stocking Protestant or Roman Catholic literature?

The Orthodox take on SPCK

Orthodox charity St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust are to take over the SPCK bookshop chain, which you might remember from my campaign earlier in the year.

This is splendid news as it means the future of the shops has been safeguarded.

Thanks to Neil for passing on the news.

Comment from an SPCK employee

Father Richard, an SPCK employee has commented on my original post about the SPCK bookshops. I thought the comment well worth drawing to your attention:

Perhaps it is time for an SPCK employee to add a few comments. Firstly, thank you for this initiative, and for the chance to hear what people think of us. Yes, the SPCK Bookshops are an imperfect bunch, with their own idiosyncracies. We don't see ourselves as a chain because each branch is so different - it exists to respond to the needs of the local community. We all buy our own stock based on how we perceive that need. So it is hard to generalise about what SPCK keeps on its shelves.

One of the reasons that WO eventually realised that a merger was not going to work was probably because we were all so determined to keep both our breadth of stock and our ability to control our own buying. We exist to promote Christian knowledge in its rich diversity.

Yes, Amazon is hurting our business (although we also sell some of the more unusual secondhand stock on Amazon as well), but the time has passed to moan about that. The biggest problem SPCK has had has been that it simply doesn't have the money necessary to invest in developing the shops.

Yes, too many mediocre books are published - as shops we have to do some of the work editing out the dross without restricting our customers opportunities to find what they need. There are also too many Christian bookshops competing in a dwindling market. If SPCK is to survive then it must be because it is offering what is really needed.

I take issue with those who see us as just stocking populist titles on spiritual warfare. I've never stocked anything like that (we have a WO on the same street we can refer people to), but promote the likes of Robert Beckford, Gordon Lynch, Callum Brown, Timothy Radcliffe, Leonard Sweet, Hans Urs von Balthasar, John Shelby Spong, Tina Beattie and Elizabeth Stuart. The strength of a shop over the internet should be the ability to browse, to try something different and, hopefully to mix with other people with similar interests and differing views.

What worries me, as a bookseller and as a parish priest, is how much harder it is becoming to engage people in thinking about their faith, in exploring it, pushing at the boundaries, growing a deeper knowledge of Christ. Sales of good quality Biblical commentaries are minimal. Hardly anyone wants to really get to know the Bible in depth. All the stuff on 'new ways of being church' has stiffed as much as anything because many people aren't prepared to accept that the world has moved on. DVD material, with the honourable exception of the Nooma series, has been risible in its content. And the trouble with Greenbelt is that is only once a year!

Finally, the problems SPCK are having reflect wider problems in the churches. Too many of us are still stuck looking inwards. Yes, we have a big responsibility to our Christian communities but if we don't work hard on bringing the Word to the rest of the high street then we are not doing justice to the Gospel.

There is also a comment from Clive Wright, chairman of the governing body of SPCK in today's Church Times. I can't type it out in full as I need to do some work, but it includes:

May I make it clear that the trustee Governing Body of SPCK has taken no decisions about the future of its shops; the Society is a charity with a modest income that is insufficient to meet large operating deficits. We must therefore consider carefully the future of each shop, endeavouring to take account of our responsibilities to our staff, or mission and the wider Christian community. Our aim will be to preserve as many outlets as possible consistent with our limited resources.

See also Save the SPCK! and the SPCK song.

The SPCK song

The 'Save the SPCK' campaign continues. John and (one assumes) the good folks from Sprowston have recorded the SPCK song! It is about 1mb. Fantastic.

Meanwhile at least 20 bloggers have added the SPCK cartoon to their sites, thereby indicating their support for the campaign. There has been a great debate in the comments section too. It pleases me that such a diverse bunch feel that they want to comment on this blog. I really do appreciate it.

I have added a 'Save the SPCK' category to the blog, so that all posts on the subject are in one easy to find place.

So, where do we go from here? I think we need some evangelists to take the campaign to new mission fields. Post your ideas here!*

*I am using a lot of exclamation marks these days. This is not usual for me. It is to convey my enthusiasm.

Save the SPCK!

The SPCK bookshops are on the brink of closure. So says a report in the Church Times.

"So what?" I hear you ask. Well, I think it is a shame. SPCK shops are, in many parts of the UK the only place where Christian books of a non-evangelical nature are stocked. This has got to be bad news for anyone like myself who is producing literature of interest to the broader Christian community rather than just the evangelical sector. It is true that at the moment I don't have a book and I'm not selling my cards though SPCK, but both of those could change (or could have changed) in the future.

I might add that it is not only SPCK who are having problems. Wesley Owen have announced they are to close their flagship store in central London. To quote their spokesman:

"Every time someone buys from Amazon, rather than from a bookshop, that is another nail in the coffin of a Christian retailer."

So, what can we do about this?
• Somebody could record a song.
• If you know a benevolent benefactor see whether you can persuade them to buy the SPCK.
• Support your local SPCK (though it may be too late for that)
• Join my one man campaign by adding this cartoon to your blog using this code:



Update:
Let's list the bloggers supporting the campaign.
Serena
Sam of Redwelly fame
Jack the Lass
Ian of the Youthblog
Neil "I will personally miss a friendly shop that actually changed my life."
Rosamundi
Never conforming
Urban Army
Musings, by Miffy
Dolphy
Tractorgirl
Connexions
Mad Teacher
the last burnt sienna crayon
Soprano Helen
The Days are Just Packed
Good in Parts
onmebus
Deep Thought
The librarians tangents
robert marshall
think bubbles
Three Chord Wonder
Christian Bookshops - News
Of course, I could be wrong
The Complex Christ
A Curious Girl
Thoughtful Christian


Update: You can find all posts relating to the SPCK campaign by clicking the Save the SPCK category.