equip the Church

I have been a fan of the Savannah Bananas for a while. If you do not know them yet, stop reading this right now and go find some interviews or clips with their founder Jesse Cole. It will be well worth your time.

When you’re done, you will understand why I could not stop thinking about Christian publishing while listening to Simon Sinek interview Jesse recently on his podcast.

The whole conversation is worth your time, but what struck me was how little of it was actually about baseball. It was about what it means to build something genuinely for the people you exist to serve. It was about the difference between an organization that captures value and one that creates it. It was about the gap between saying we exist for our readers and actually, structurally, culturally meaning it.

Jesse Cole calls his standard “fans first.” Every decision, every night, every seat in the stadium, including the ones farthest from the field, gets evaluated through that lens. Is this good for the fan? Are we genuinely for them?

As I listened to the podcast, I kept thinking: this is exactly what Christian publishers say we believe. And exactly what we so often fail to practice.

Jesse Cole, founder of the Savannah Bananas, has a ritual every time his team arrives at a new stadium.

Before anything else, before sound checks or promotions or game prep, he takes his entire team to the upper deck. The nosebleed seats. The cheap seats. The seats farthest from the action, where the fans who waited two or three years just to get a ticket finally get their chance.

And he asks one question: How do we make this experience wonderful at this price range, at this distance?

He calls it “winning the upper deck.” And it is, as Simon Sinek observed in their conversation, unheard of.

Most businesses go the other direction. They obsess over the front row. They optimize for the premium customer, the high margin transaction, the VIP experience. The back of the stadium, like the back of the plane, is an afterthought. It exists to generate revenue, not to be genuinely served.

Christian publishers do the same thing. We just use different language to hide it.

The Language of Mission, the Logic of Survival

Walk into most publishing strategy meetings and you will hear the right words. Equipping the church. Serving the reader. Kingdom impact. Discipleship first.

Then watch what actually drives the decisions.

Which title has the best margin? Which author has the biggest platform? Which book will move enough units to cover what the last book didn’t? Are we losing sales to a competitor? And then there are the bookstores — Christian bookstores who complain that conference book tables are stealing their customers, that church book stalls are cutting into their revenue, that publishers are going direct and bypassing them entirely. Everyone in the supply chain is watching everyone else, calculating who is taking what, protecting their slice, lobbying for their piece of the distribution pie.

Nobody is asking: what is actually best for the reader?

Survival thinking, dressed in ministry language.

This is not an accusation. It is a diagnosis of the problem. Organizations under financial pressure default to capturing value rather than creating it. The reader becomes a source of revenue. The book becomes a product to move. And slowly, without anyone deciding it, the publisher stops asking what does this reader need to grow? and starts asking what can we sell to this reader next?

Jesse Cole built something different with Banana Ball. And the difference is not a slogan. It is a standard.

The Standard That Changes Everything

On the opening night of the Savannah Bananas’ very first season, a young woman approached Jesse. Her fiancé had attended every opening night at that stadium since he was a child. He had died tragically the week before. She was there with his family, in his honor. She just wanted a signed ball. Something to hold onto.

She mentioned one more thing. Her fiancé’s name was Drew Moody. And there was a player on the Bananas roster named Drew Moody.

Jesse found Logan Moody, Drew’s younger brother, eighteen years old, two days into his time with the team. He told him the story.

Logan didn’t hesitate. He went and gathered the entire team, had every single one of them sign the ball. Then he walked back up into the stands, sat down next to the woman, put his arm around her, and stayed there for a whole inning. He didn’t perform a gesture. He just stayed.

When he finally came back down, Jesse looked at him. This eighteen year old kid, two days on the job, who had just done something no policy manual could have produced.

Logan shrugged. Fans first, right?

He had been there two days. And he already understood what the organization was actually for. Not because someone had trained him. Because the culture had made it obvious. When a grieving woman asks for a signed ball bearing the same name as the man she just lost, you don’t process the request. You sit with her.

That is what a standard looks like. Not a training program. Not a values statement on a wall. A standard is what an eighteen year old reaches for instinctively when no one is watching, because the culture has made it obvious what matters most.

Christian publishers need to ask: what would an eighteen year old on our team do instinctively when they encountered a struggling reader? Would they know what we are actually for?

That is what a standard looks like. Not a training program. Not a values statement on a wall. A standard is what an eighteen year old reaches for instinctively when no one is watching, because the culture has made it obvious what matters most.

Christian publishers need to ask: what would an eighteen year old on our team do instinctively when they encountered a struggling christian at conference? Would they know what we are actually for?

The Reader in the Upper Deck

Jesse Cole’s most consistent move is going to the people who are easiest to ignore.

He passes out roses to little girls in the farthest sections. He runs the sing off from section 527 instead of the field. In the beginning, before they had millions of customer, he called every single fan who buys a ticket, just to thank them.

Jesse Cole’s most consistent move is going to the people who are easiest to ignore.

He passes out roses to little girls in the farthest sections. He runs the sing off from section 527 instead of the field. He calls every single fan who buys a ticket, just to thank them.

In the first year, when they were still fighting for every single person who walked through the gate, a twenty three year old intern named Barry was working through a call list, thanking fans for buying tickets. He came across a family that had bought nine tickets. A lot of tickets for a small team in its first season. He called. No answer. He tried again the next day.

This time a father picked up.

The father’s voice was quiet. He told Barry that his wife had just died. That they had nine tickets. That he had seven children. That he was sorry, but they would not be coming to the game.

Barry was twenty three years old. He was an intern. Nobody had written a policy for this moment. He sat with it for a second, then walked into Jesse’s office and told him what had happened.

Jesse did what great leaders do. He turned it back. Barry, he said, what do you think we should do?

Barry already knew. He called the father back. He told him they would love to take care of the family. That if he could bring the kids, they would make sure it was special. The father paused. Then he said it would probably be good to get the kids out of the house.

When they arrived, Barry met them at the gate. He had arranged front row seats. He had merchandise for every child. But before the game even started, the players came. College kids, most of them, who had their own dreams and their own pressures, who had no particular reason to give their time to a grieving family they had never met. They came anyway. They sat with the children. They talked to them, laughed with them, signed things for them. Throughout the game they kept coming back, checking in, celebrating with them, making sure no one in that row felt invisible.

The family stayed until the very end. In those days almost nobody stayed until the end of a baseball game. They stayed.

Afterward, the father found Barry. He looked at this twenty three year old intern who had called him back when he didn’t have to, who had arranged all of this without being asked, who had somehow understood that what a family in grief needed was not a refund but a reason to leave the house.

He said: that was the last gift my wife gave our kids. I could never imagine a better gift.

Barry had not been given a manual for that moment. He had been given a culture. And the culture told him exactly what to do.

That father said it afterward: That was the last gift my wife gave our kids. I could never imagine a better gift.

Who is the reader in your upper deck? Who is the pastor in a rural church, far from the conference circuits and Church networks, who has never been noticed by anyone who would be transformed by the right book at the right moment, if only someone thought to go to where he was sitting?

Distribution strategies, platform building, and marketing funnels all have their place. But they are only tools. The question underneath them is whether we are genuinely oriented toward the person we are trying to serve, or whether we are oriented toward our own survival.

Reggie

The most remarkable story in the interview is not about a fan. It is about a man named Reggie who wanted to work for the Bananas.

Reggie called every week for months. Every week, the same voice on the phone. Hey, it’s Reggie. I just really want a job. The team would tell him the job fair was in April. He would say okay, thank you, and call again the following week. Not aggressive. Not demanding. Just consistent. Just Reggie, calling because he believed in what they were building and wanted to be part of it.

When the job fair finally came, he showed up with a big smile. They found something for him. Not a glamorous something. He greeted fans at the gate. He helped with trash. He did the work that nobody photographs or celebrates, the behind the scenes, invisible, unglamorous work that keeps an organization running. The kind of work that tells you everything about a person’s character because nobody is watching and nobody is applauding.

And every single day, without fail, Reggie arrived at the ballpark with that same big smile. It did not matter if it was hot. It did not matter if it was about to rain. It did not matter what kind of day he had before he got there. When Reggie walked through that gate he would look around at the field and the stands and the whole improbable thing they were building together, and he would say it like he meant it every single time:

It’s a great day for a ball game.

Not because things were always great. But because Reggie had decided that showing up with joy was the job. That the work itself was the gift. That being part of something, being seen, being trusted with even the smallest piece of it, was worth celebrating every single morning.

After three years, he pulled Jesse aside. He had something to tell him. His birthday, he said, happened to fall on a game day this year. He said it casually, like it was just information. Then he proceeded to tell every single member of the staff the exact same thing.

On his birthday, Jesse gathered the whole team for their pre game pep rally. Then he called Reggie over. Before Reggie could figure out what was happening, they started singing. Happy birthday, Reggie. There was cake. There were balloons. Reggie looked around at all of them and said, almost to himself: for me?

Of course, Reggie. It’s for you.

Then Jesse said: one more thing. Come down to the dugout just before the game.

Reggie showed up, like he always showed up. On time. Smiling. Ready.

The stadium was sold out. Four thousand fans on their feet. The band was on the dugout. The announcer was calling the starting lineup, each player’s name echoing through the stadium as they ran through the tunnel into the roar of the crowd.

Batting first for the Bananas. The crowd cheered.

Batting second for the Bananas. The crowd cheered again.

And then: last but not least, fans, you know him, you love him, let’s hear it for Reggie.

Reggie threw his arms in the air and ran through that tunnel. He high fived every single player on his way through. At the end of the line, the coach was waiting for him, holding a jersey with his name on it. The coach put it on him, straightened it out, and sent him to stand in the lineup for the national anthem, shoulder to shoulder with the players, in front of four thousand people.

And as the anthem played, a single tear ran down Reggie’s face.

He stayed in the dugout for the entire game. Not in the stands, not behind a rope, not watching from a distance. In the dugout. With the guys. And the players loved having him there. They said he brought something they couldn’t manufacture, a joy that was completely unself conscious, a presence that reminded them why any of it mattered.

Be honest for a moment.

If Reggie called your publishing ministry every week, what would happen? Would someone on your team start sighing when they saw his name on the caller ID? Would there be a quiet eye roll in the office, it’s Reggie again? Would he eventually get a polite email explaining that you don’t have any open positions and encouraging him to check back later?

And what about his readers? The person who emails to ask why a book is out of stock. The pastor in a small church who writes to say a book changed his ministry and wants to know what to read next. The reader who seems to need a little more hand holding than you budgeted for. Do we see these people as interruptions to the real work, or as the reason the real work exists?

Here is another question…

When a reader asks us what book they should read next, do we recommend the best book for them, even if it is not in our catalog? When a church asks us to help them build a reading culture, do we point them toward whatever will actually serve their congregation, or do we quietly steer every recommendation back toward titles we publish and sales that pass through us?

And what about the bookstore that calls to complain that the church down the road has started a book table? That the conference they used to supply is now buying direct? That they are losing sales to people who have no business selling books?

Here is what nobody in that conversation wants to say out loud: the person browsing a book table in a church foyer after Sunday morning was never going to walk into your bookstore. She does not know your bookstore exists. He has not been inside a Christian bookstore in years, or ever. The church book table did not steal that sale. It created it. It reached someone who exists completely outside the traditional retail ecosystem, put a book in their hands, and started them on a journey that might eventually lead them to you.

We are not playing a zero sum game. We are playing an infinite game. Every new reader the church book table creates is a reader who might one day walk into a bookstore, browse a conference exhibit hall, or subscribe to a publisher’s newsletter. or even become a pastor. The pie is not fixed. It grows every time someone who was not reading starts reading.

But we do not act that way. We act like every sale that does not pass through us is a sale stolen from us. We calculate margin and territory and channel conflict while the person we all claim to exist for stands in a church foyer, picks up a book, reads the back cover, puts it down, and walks away, because nobody made it easy enough, or cheap enough, or compelling enough for her to say yes.

Jesse Cole keeps every game free on YouTube. He charges the same price for tickets that a college student can afford. When they play at the home stadium in Georgia, they include all food in the ticket price. His team agonizes over parking fees charged by venues they do not control, because anything that makes it harder for a fan to have a full experience feels like a betrayal of what they are for. He said it plainly: Every day I want to create a fan. Every day you raise prices, you lose a fan.

It is a different game. And until we understand that, we will keep losing the argument about margin while losing the reader entirely.

Jesse Cole’s team could have seen Reggie as a nuisance. Persistent, unqualified, probably not what they had in mind when they imagined their staff. Instead, someone took the time to find him something to do. And three years later, when he mentioned his birthday was on a game day, someone paid attention. Not because there was a system for it. Because they had built a culture that saw people.

Reggie now travels with the team as motivational coach. He gives pep talks. Players chant his name. He signs more autographs after games than almost anyone.

Jesse’s reflection: People might say, ‘Oh, you empowered him.’ He empowered us.

The Reggies of Christian publishing are everywhere. The reader who seems too needy. The author who is not yet impressive enough for our catalog. The small church pastor who orders three books at a time and writes long appreciative emails that nobody has time to answer. We have quietly decided they are not quite the audience we are building for. We are oriented toward the influential, the scalable, the high return relationship.

But what if Reggie is not the interruption? What if he is exactly the person we exist for, and exactly the person who, when genuinely seen and served, becomes something we never could have manufactured?

What You Are Really Competing Against

Jesse Cole understood early that his real competition was not other baseball teams. It was Netflix, video games, and the couch. He was competing for attention in a world that had more options than any previous generation.

Christian publishers face the same reality. The reader you are trying to reach is not sitting at home thinking about which Christian publisher to buy from. He is exhausted. He is overstimulated. He is scrolling past your post without slowing down.

In that environment, being theologically sound and well produced is not enough. You have to earn their attention. And you earn it the same way Jesse Cole does: by being so genuinely oriented toward them that the experience of encountering your ministry feels different from everything else.

The Bananas spend zero dollars on advertising. They invest everything in the experience, then capture and share it. Their marketing is not a campaign. It is the overflow of a culture that actually cares.

Win the Upper Deck

Simon Sinek made the observation that every story Jesse tells is the same story. The young woman who lost her fiancé. The father with seven children. The players whose dreams were cut short by injury. The little girl in section 562 getting a rose from a player. Reggie. Five year old Jesse, sitting alone in the dugout, until Hall of Famer Lee Smith came and sat next to him for twenty minutes.

They’re all the story of how the world makes us feel. The story of having something taken away. Of being sidelined. Of not being able to participate.

Jesse has spent his career becoming the type of person that sits next to the lonely kid, that goes to the upper deck and makes sure that no one leaves feeling like they didn’t matter.

Christian publishers have been given something more precious than entertainment. We steward truth that comforts the grieving, steadies the anxious, orients the confused, builds up the body of Christ and points people to the one who brings lasting peace through Jesus Christ. The question is whether the person we are trying to reach ever actually feels that we are for them, not just for our ministry’s survival, not just for our catalog’s growth, but genuinely, concretely, lavishly for them.

Go to the upper deck. That is where the real work begins.