Refreshing Reversal -- It Takes a Woman

From World Magazine. This is an excerpt--to read the entire article click here.

Refreshing reversal

Zondervan takes a step in what may be a very good direction | Joel Belz

There's wonderful irony in the news that it took a woman to produce a breakthrough in the battle over gender-inclusive Bibles.

Moe Girkins, who early in 2008 became president and CEO of Zondervan Publishing Co., quickly developed a concern about the collapse over the last decade of Zondervan's worldwide dominance in Bible sales. Since the introduction of the New International Version of the Bible in 1978, Zondervan had enjoyed a virtual monopoly on both NIV Bibles and NIV-licensed products. Toward the end of the 1990s, Zondervan could claim that nearly 300 million NIV Bibles were in print around the world—a staggering number that eclipsed all other modern translations and justified the claim that the NIV had become the contemporary replacement for the venerable King James Version of the Bible.

But then, in a series of decisions that puzzled many throughout the evangelical world, Zondervan—in close cooperation with the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT) and the International Bible Society (IBS)—began replacing the traditional NIV with revisions that lit a firestorm of controversy. Specifically, the changes included extensive use of so-called "gender-inclusive language," which many evangelical scholars argued went beyond a faithful rendering of the original texts. Whole denominations protested the changes, and thousands of Bible buyers began looking for a suitable replacement for the NIV.

Zondervan and the NIV never lost their lead position in Bible sales. But as the evangelical family feud continued, they did take a hit. By some accounts, the NIV, which had enjoyed as much as a 50 percent market share, may have slipped to not much more than half that figure.

That's the situation Moe Girkins inherited when she took over the 75-year-old Zondervan early last year. Coming as a seasoned corporate executive but a relatively new evangelical believer, she impressed many with her ability to pick up the nuances necessary to operate in the complex evangelical milieu. Indeed, she had already personally taken on a graduate degree program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill. So it didn't take her long to appreciate that some serious issues needed to be addressed. "It's not just the sales," Girkins told me on the phone late last year. "I'm concerned that we have Christians who are still upset and even angry at each other over 12-year-old issues that ought to have been resolved." I could tell she meant business.