Lifeway to Sell $100,000,000 Headquarters 3 Years After Moving in
Lifeway Christian Resources, the retail and sales arm of the Southern Baptist Convention and the bane of biblical Christians everywhere, is selling their corporate headquarters less than three years after moving in.
“We dedicate this building to God-for His glory and for His gospel” said then Lifeway President Thom Rainer in 2017 during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new building. “May everything that comes from this place be used in such a way that lives will be transformed, not only here on earth but into eternity.”
Lifeway began looking for a buyer for the hundred million dollar, 277,000sqft building less than two years later.
In a statement about the sale, current Lifeway President and CEO Ben Mandrell said:
“Lifeway is moving forward, building fresh vision, and getting prepared for a new season of ministry to churches. This has led us to think strategically about selling our large building downtown, fully embracing remote work as the norm, and moving into a new era of creative and collaborative work.”
Mandrell continues:
One of the first questions I asked when I took this role was, ‘What should we do with this building?’ A study completed last year showed we were using the building at only 60% occupancy on a daily basis.
We’re definitely moving to a new work environment. Our new space will be designed specifically around a healthy blend of strategic meetings and team collaboration, as well as the flexibility of working from home. Like other companies are doing as a result of COVID, we’re re-imagining the corporate office for the future of work.
We are moving away from the idea of a ‘headquarters’ to a fully mobile and agile workforce that intentionally gathers to build strong relationships, celebrate what God is doing and share ideas.”
In short. It’s about the money
Five years ago, Lifeway was employing nearly 5000 staff and had 500 million in annual sales. Now, the years have not been kind to the organization who has repeatedly been caught selling spiritual garbage and unorthodox books from their shelves. They’ve had to sell their famous Ridgecrest Conference Center, close 170 retail stores, have slashed jobs, seen sales plummet, let loose rounds of layoffs, and are operating in multi-million dollar deficits.
We’re not happy Lifeway staff members are losing their job of course – that’s unfortunate and hard on families. But we consider any cut to Lifeway’s bloated corpse to be one worth celebrating. We’re thankful for every hardship they endure, every calamity they suffer through, and every misery they abide. Harsh? Hardly. How else should we feel about the largest retailer of heresy in the world?
Far from being concerned about equipping Southern Baptists with an exquisite selection of the best books that Christendom has to offer, Lifeway’s primary driving factor is the pursuit of the almighty dollar, routinely taking little sidequests along the highways and byways of the Baptist experience, on a mission to attain some of that sweet, sweet filthy lucre.
How else can you explain their propensity to stock every sort of soft-covered spiritual strychnine they can put on their shelves in any space not currently occupied by a Beth Moore bible study?
We have one prayer for Lifeway: that they utterly and completely implode into a smoldering crater for all the gangrenous blasphemy they’ve been peddling for decades. Our feelings run to the point where if the Lord tarries a thousand years, old Southern Baptist men and women will look back with solemn eyes, wistful words, and speak with deep regret and shame that they ever allowed the theological abortion known as Lifeway to be even passingly associated with their denomination.
Alternately, we pray that Lifeway steps back from the black mass they’re currently engulfed in, rend their proverbial garments, and repent for the great sins they’ve engaged in by giving Southern Baptists the knife to slit their own throats on account of all the poisonous content they’ve been providing over the years. If they do that and bear fruit in keeping with repentance, then we will pray for their success.
Until then, let it burn.
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And don’t forget, Lifeway sold off WordSearch, their Bible Software, to Logos with no warning to customers.
The only way for LifeWay to survive would be to do an about face and actually “equipping Southern Baptists with an exquisite selection of the best books that Christendom has to offer” (quote from your article of what they aren’t doing). As a church librarian, it is almost impossible in today’s climate to easily purchase books based on Biblical truth. We desperately need a purchasing resource that the average reader can rely on. God must be frowning down on LifeWay, and the only way to be blessed by Him is with a book selling ministry that is focused on serving Him. Jeremy Walker, a British Baptist who works in publishing stated, “While you cannot get away from publishing as business, you cannot forget publishing as ministry.” LifeWay would do well to heed those words.