Question for a Faithlife Employee about Tradition Base Packages

This is going to be by a likely slight bias towards reformed resources since As I understand it Bob and many FL employees are of the Reformed tradition. That is not to say they do not do good work with other traditions just that there is at least the slightest bias. One would guess for example that they pushed into their faith community to show the value of Logos software. Possibly given at least a slight edge to numbers of user from that tradition.  One would also suspect that Reform products would be important for Bob to want to get for personal reasons And the possible larger reform base would mean they have a better chance of them making it into production. I do half way suspect the largest group is Evangelicals but I am curious about the numbers too. 

-dan 

Nick said:

My observation has been that the March Madness votes tend to favor Reformed theologians (and now commentaries, presumably).  I would also presume that Faithlife's largest market is from Reformed traditions - so I'm curious to see if that assumption is correct.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that the reformed tradition is very prolific in writing, especially academic writing. Any large enough collection of protestant scholarship is going to lean in that direction. I'm a systematic theologian but not reformed. I'd estimate, though, that >80% of my theology collection is reformed simply because they write the most books (and often very good ones, too).

" rel="nofollow">Keep Smiling 4 Jesus said:

User observation is Logos.com can sort Base Packages by Bestselling

Well, that can't be right. P&C Gold is the top selling tradition after Standard packages and that's without the Fire Bible. [;)] (At least that's what  shows when I click the link.)

Matthew Cillo said:

P&C Gold is the top selling tradition after Standard packages

That's mostly because P&C only goes up to Gold. To do a fair comparison, you'd have to add in the Platinum and Portfolio sales from the other traditions.

Oh my didn't know anglican was bottom of the barrel.... Hope I am not the only one who bought Anglican Portfolio.

-dan

Matthew Cillo said:

I think your line up for tradition totals is probably accurate, which is surprising. I honestly didn't expect P&C to be ranked so high.

I would actually guess that P&C and Methodist/Wesleyan may be lower than Mark thinks because they have fewer offerings for customers to choose between.

abondservant said:

Nick said:

I suspect that the largest American market would be Reformed anyway.  I am a Wesleyan, and I find that among laity in many Wesleyan congregations, Reformed ideas and theologies are very prevalent.  The SBC and their stores and publishing are also very influential culturally.  Most radio stations lean toward Reformed theologies.  American Christianity, by my observation, leans toward Reformed theologies.

In those observations - which may well be wrong - I don't intend to express an opinion (and I don't have a negative one anyway).  I don't want to be misread as somehow being negative.

Increasingly so in the last few years. It seems to have come (more?) into vogue.

The uptick and big "push" (for lack of a better word) of Reformed Theology in America began about 20 years ago.  It was very noticeable to me (as a non-Reformed minister) back then, and the trending of Logos has been noticeable as well in recent years.

SineNomine said:

I would actually guess that P&C and Methodist/Wesleyan may be lower than Mark thinks because they have fewer offerings for customers to choose between.

Maybe 1 or 2, but I think they are probably pretty close to that. Even though they have less products, they are much higher in the charts than others like SDA that have similar offerings. That P&C Gold and P&C Bronze seem to be outselling all the individual Reformed packages would indicate a fairly large number are interested in those sets. M/W should probably be lower than Baptist, though. It would be interesting to see the tradition spread of the Logos users and it is encouraging to see so many traditions gathered around Bible software. 

I'm new here, as I'm sure you can tell. But if I recall from the P&C boards, their packages are relatively new compared to the others, so I imagine they got a little boost from that. (Having no idea how far back the bestseller list tracks... and I'm sure what people already owned affected what Logos 7 base package(s) they bought.)

In the end, this all speculation based off a bestseller list that aggregates from unknown data points.

Nick said:

Dan Francis said:

Oh my didn't know anglican was bottom of the barrel.... Hope I am not the only one who bought Anglican Portfolio.

-dan

I haven't invested that much (yet?) but I have Anglican Bronze and Methodist/Wesleyan Gold.  Maybe I'll work my way up there eventually

I suspect that Pentecostal and Charismatic is higher than might be higher than anticipated because of there are a lot of popular "charismatic" authors categorised here.

As for the Wesleyan, speaking for myself I find that much of the material in this category is useful for me as it reflects the roots of the Holiness Pentecostal tradition that I belong to, especially some of the older works, plus it helps in building a library that is more "balanced" in terms of thought and interpretation. 

IMHO the biggest mistake you can make is building a library that only includes authors from your tradition and with whom you agree.

Graham Owen said:

IMHO the biggest mistake you can make is building a library that only includes authors from your tradition and with whom you agree.

Not picking on you; this is a common statement, I've always questioned. Folks typically don't shop churches, except for social reasons. For sure, they don't cross racial lines ( tested that out, for curiousity).  But books, are different. It's safe to read, but only 'close-by' books. And the worst are apostacized-authors. Even a thousand years ago.

I bet there's a sociology metric for allowable distance, that Logos could use.

Graham Owen said:

From my own pentecostal tradition few understand why cessationists hold the view they do they believe they are wrong because they have been told they are wrong. 

I think in a lot of our church communities many of the people who attend our churches, even frequently, have a very limited grasp of (and perhaps agreement with) the theologies (theoretically) professed. I thus tend to support reading first in one's own 'tradition', if only to find out what it is, and then branching out. The base packages targeted to various traditions offered by Faithlife help with both kinds of reading, I find.

Anecdotally, rare is the Protestant layperson (who reads religious books and) who will read either modern Catholic/Eastern Orthodox works or works from the first millennium of Christianity; both of those jumps are arguably much larger than the Reformed/Arminian and other standard/'classic' intra-Protestant arguments. Once again, Faithlife's offerings help with making those jumps as well--in both directions.

Graham Owen said:

Denise said:

Graham Owen said:

IMHO the biggest mistake you can make is building a library that only includes authors from your tradition and with whom you agree.

Not picking on you; this is a common statement, I've always questioned. Folks typically don't shop churches, except for social reasons. For sure, they don't cross racial lines ( tested that out, for curiousity).  But books, are different. It's safe to read, but only 'close-by' books. And the worst are apostacized-authors. Even a thousand years ago.

I bet there's a sociology metric for allowable distance, that Logos could use.

There is a huge difference between reading people from different traditions that there is reading "apostacized-authors" (heretics) one of the failings of this age is that too often these are not identified within their tradition or from outside.

I'm intrigued that by the comment "Folks typically don't shop churches, except for social reasons" which would seem to imply that theological tradition is not important when selection a Church.

As for ethnic/cultural boundaries, there is only one human race, personally I don't understand why so many Churches remain segregated, the Church that I pastor has a mixed congregation (ethnically and culturally) and we embrace our differences joining together in a common Christian faith with a common Saviour, Jesus.

I would agree that those who read little should stay within safe boundaries but if you are reading widely then depth and variation are important to develop thinking and the ability to defend your tradition. 

From my own pentecostal tradition few understand why cessationists hold the view they do they believe they are wrong because they have been told they are wrong. 

I've bought 45 base packages over the years, and have bought from all of the available denominations - including verbum master - except SDA (unintentional by-product of my purchase methodology). Because even if I disagree with their answers, sometimes people that are approaching the scripture from a different perspective ask questions that might not have occurred to me.

Much of our western thought was influence by Augustine of Hippo - a catholic. Thomas Akempis Imitation of Christ is required reading at a number of protestant bible colleges (he too was catholic).  Likewise I think there are many protestants catholics could learn from - Edwards, Spurgeon, Whitfield, Piper, or Platt. 

It is short sighted, I think, to only read people that you agree with. Your knowledge and understanding of a topic tends to be deeper having read those you disagree with. Is not deeper understanding of a topic part of why we buy these books and read in the first place?

As to the ethnicity point, in my experience churches start as homogenous, and end up heterogenous after a time.

When I started working with the teens at a local FBC church there were three kids, and about 25 adults in a building meant for 400 I was the darkest skinned person in the membership and I'm mostly white (a little hispanic, less american indian, and less still african - but I look olive skinned).

Ten years later when the Lord sent me elsewhere there were over a hundred in regular attendance and 6-7 families of peoples of other ethnicities besides white. So I think it depends on where a church and its people are not only geographically, but in terms of their walk with the Lord. Baby christians might go to a church for social reasons. But it strikes me as often as not those with deeper walks care more about a churches theology, and where a person is going to spend eternity than skin color or social affiliation.

Maybe thats unique to baptists, or protestants. But I suspect not.