On Sunday afternoon, I left the ELCA church council meeting early to drive to Dubuque, IA. I had been invited to Wartburg Seminary for Monday morning through lunch.

I have had the privilege of being on this campus for each of the past 5 years. I enjoyed the company of President Duane Larson where we compared notes on the critical importance of strategic planning and of making hard, but essential, leadership decisions. We have both received much affirmation and a bit of grief for hard decisions that we’ve recently made and announced. So, it was good to compare notes. It was wonderful to hear the enthusiasm in his voice as he talked about the future of Wartburg Seminary and the educational opportunities they provide for future pastors, youth ministers, CE directors, etc.

AF author, Norma Cook-Everist, was the catalyst for my visit to Wartburg Seminary. But, my visits always expand off of her hospitality! I enjoyed speaking to the students in her Christian Education class. Not only was I able to share information about some of the innovative and successful resources that we have published over the past several years, but I was also able to give them a “sneak preview” of some of our forthcoming resources, including those related to the Book of Faith Initiative and our spring 2009 Sunday School curricula, Spark! They reacted to the slides just as I expected they would. With energy, enthusiasm and excellent questions.

After class, Norma had invited anyone from the Wartburg community to join us for lunch and Q&A about publishing. There was quite a turnout! People came and went, so I didn’t have an exact count, but there must have been 20 people who stopped by at some point during the lunch hour. Students, faculty, staff, spouses of students. They had excellent questions for me related to their interests as writers of curricula, music composers and arrangers, copyeditors, book authors, etc. There is obviously a lot of talent in this community!

Last, but far from least, I had the opportunity to spend a bit of time during the day with Barb, Jill & Jean, all staff members in our Augsburg Fortress bookstore on campus. It was bittersweet to be with them. We announced on November 7 that we will be closing 9 bookstores, including this one, by no later than April 30, 2009 so that we can focus our time, talents, and financial resources on the creation of new resources for the church. So, these good, hardworking people will be laid off. But, they were incredibly gracious, warm and welcoming to me. Class acts! They noted that they are sad and a bit nervous about the future. But, they also commented on how much they appreciated the 6 months’ notice that we have given them along with the “safety net” of severance, outplacement assistance, etc. We are blessed by such loyal and gracious staff members. I encourage anyone who reads this blog to say a prayer for these good people and the others from AF and so many other companies, who are being laid off. These are challenging times, to be sure.

I always enjoy my time on our ELCA Seminary campuses. Interacting with the students who are our future pastors and other church leaders gives me such optimism for the future! These are nurturing, challenging, inspiring communities!

Blessings,
Beth

Beth A. Lewis, President & CEO
Augsburg Fortress

I signed up for Twitter this afternoon and have been trying to figure out how to find people I know who use it. Or, people I don’t know but think might be interesting! However, the Twitter “search” function doesn’t seem to work.

So, how about you? Do you use Twitter? How? Is there a way to use it for church? for business? I’m intrigued, but not sure what the applications are beyond just casual chat.

Insights anyone? Reach me at www.twitter.com/bethalewis

Blessings,
Beth

Beth A. Lewis, President & CEO
Augsburg Fortress

Like every group, the industry known as “religious publishers” has its own trade journals. One of them is the Religion Bookline newsletter of Publishers Weekly magazine.

Today’s edition included a retrospective of the American Academy of Religion conference held in Chicago last week, from the publishers’ perspective. We were pleased to see that Fortress Press development editor, Josh Messner, was quoted!

While the event was slow (well, actually very slow) in terms of sales, our editors were busy with back-to-back meetings with authors and prospective authors. Pamela Johnson, our textbook adoption consultant met with many faculty wanting her suggestions on which textbooks they should adopt for their classes. We hosted a party that was very well attended (reported to be “the place to be” at the AAR by a number of seminary and university faculty). And, we toasted the publication of The People’s Bible.

So, all in all, a good event for AF with much work before, during & after contributed by my sales, marketing, editorial and events management colleagues! Thanks, all!

Of course, we hope that we will have the same buzz of activity at the upcoming Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) conference in Boston….but more sales would certainly help pay for the party!

Blessings,
Beth

Beth A. Lewis, President & CEO
Augsburg Fortress