Bed Bath & Beyond… and the Church
Photo by Tim Mossholder (Pexels)
By now you may have heard that Bed Bath & Beyond (BB&B) has filed for bankruptcy and will be closing its stores.
It was once “an unstoppable retailer—deemed a ‘category killer’ for its triumph over many rivals,” noted a National Public Radio (NPR) article on its demise. Now it will begin closing its 360 BB&B stores as well as 120 buybuy BABY stores.
There was much at hand behind its rise and subsequent fall. As NPR noted, these included:
… misfired turnarounds, abrupt leadership shakeups, a rise and crash as a meme stock, store closures, job cuts and numerous last-gasp financing deals. For months, the chain has been losing both money and shoppers, struggling to restock shelves as supplies and banks cut off its tab.
But there was more:
Beneath the chaos, the home goods giant has faced a fundamental question: In a world that shops online, swarmed by competitors, where does it fit in?
With the onset of Amazon, Target, Wayfair and West Elm, the company never found an ongoing niche. But the heart of the matter was what one of the founders confessed to the Wall Street Journal—namely, that the chain “missed the boat on the internet.” As recently as 2019, it ran ads promoting “offline shopping” as its heart remained in stores. It’s not hard to understand why. As mentioned, they were among the famed “category killers”—big-box retailers that dominated a particular segment such as Toys “R” Us, Home Depot and Linens ‘n Things.
But as cofounder Warren Eisenberg, now 92 years of age, reflects:
If you told me that some of my grandchildren will get all their dresses on the internet, I would say, “People like to go out and shop. It’s a social thing to do…. We didn’t realize fast enough how the internet would have such a major effect on retail.
Many churches are making the same mistake. They cling to an in-person, physical model in stunning denial of the digital revolution of our world, failing to see how negatively it is impacting their mission.
It has been estimated that an additional 50,000 more stores of various kinds will close by 2027. But it’s no better for the church. The Center for Analytics, Research and Data estimates that between 3,850 to 7,700 houses of worship close each year in the United States. This is between 75 and 150 congregations each week.
As I wrote in Hybrid Church:
The digital revolution does not mean we have stopped being humans with real needs. But the reality is that the only way to continue the human interaction and transformation the church uniquely provides is to bridge the digital divide. It will take the digital to both maintain and, in many areas where it is desperately needed, call people to the physical.
I am contending for thoughtful engagement of digital tools for the sake of the evangelistic cause. Moving forward most of the church’s initial contact with a lost world will be digital. We must use digital mediums to connect with our world in order to call people back to God…. “We must imagine the whole phenomenon freshly, taking the media seriously… as a central condition of an entire way of life.” There is a difference between being a thoughtless adopter and a cultural missionary. And make no mistake, our mission field has changed dramatically.
If you don’t believe me, just ask Bed Bath & Beyond.
Or one of the thousands of churches that closed this year.
James Emery White
Sources
Alina Selyukh “Bed Bath & the Great Beyond: How the Home Goods Giant Went Bankrupt,” NPR, April 24, 2023, read online.
Suzanne Kapner, “Bed Bath & Beyond Used to Be Great. These Two Are Why.” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2023, read online.
James Emery White, Hybrid Church (Zondervan), order from Amazon.
Ian Krietzberg, “Bed Bath & Beyond is Done – And This Is Why Other Retailers Will Follow,” The Street, April 24, 2023, read online.
Yonat Shimron, “Study: More churches closing than opening,” Religion News Service, May 26, 2021, read online.
Nathaniel Meyersohn, “Bed Bath & Beyond Plans to Liquidate All Inventory and Go Out of Business,” CNN Business, April 24, 2023, read online.