The Flop Factor Bible

Have you ever heard of the Flop Factor? The very first day of Seminary we were hoarded like sheep to the library where we were given a tour of the facilities and then ushered to a conference room where we were given a presentation. The salesman was a sharply dressed fellow with a very good sales presentation. I thought he was going to recruit us to go door to door selling Bibles the way that he was presenting them. Men just like him had recruited us in college to sell dictionaries door to door. I was one of the smart ones however and worked in a local printing mill that summer instead of traveling the world selling books. I really was not interested in purchasing a Bible since I already had a good collection of them that I hardly read. Now before you jump to conclusions, I read my Bible a great deal but left the many others on the shelf for research. I had a Scofield, a King James, a New American Standard, a NIV and others. I even had a copy of the world’s smallest Bible that I needed a magnifying glass to read.


The only Bible I did not have in my possession was the one belonging to my grandfather. My Grandfather was a minister for the last 30 years of his life and actually learned to read while learning to read the Bible. His Bible was torn and aged and marked with many notes that he had made over the years. Sermons were preached directly from his Bible and most could be found footnoted in it. He used it in the pulpit each and every Sunday morning and Sunday night and on Wednesday night. He studied from it during the week and if you stopped by his house to see him you could bet that that Bible was on his lap, beside his chair, or on the table nearby. Tattered and worn are the only adjectives that come to mind. When he preached from the pulpit on Sundays often he would raise the Bible in the air especially if he was driving home a point about reading, studying, or believing in the Bible. His Bible would spread open as if had wings and was going to fly. The Bible was large and he was large and the waving of that Bible would drive home the point he would be making as he waved it in the air. This ability to appear like wings flopping in the air is what is known as the Flop Factor.


The Bible salesman offered us for a cool sum of about eighty dollars a Bible that had a good Flop Factor. However, if we were really serious about our futures, we might want to consider the very best he had to offer for one hundred eighty dollars. This Bible had been specially designed to have the highest Flop Factor of them all and the demonstration he gave was very convincing. The paper, the leather cover and the binding, all had been chosen to give us this special Flop Factor. I had never seen another Bible that could flop like that in my life except one, my grandfather’s. I knew that I did not need that Bible for my collection but that I needed only to study the one I had more often. Maybe someday my Bible would have this Flop Factor. If I was diligent in studying, reading, and searching it for answers, then someday maybe I could have a real Flop Factor Bible. I did leave with many questions in my mind and would have to search for the answers. Why had anyone researched to find out about a Flop Factor? Did a Bible with a high Fop Factor make a pastor look more distinguished as he or she spoke their sermons? Had someone requested that the manufacturer make a Bible with a better Flop Factor because they didn’t want to study theirs or maybe they wanted it to appear as they had studied theirs that much? Did preachers really stand in front of mirrors and practice preaching waving their expensive Flop Factor Bibles just to look more convincing? Is this starting to sound like Hollywood? Did someone forget that there was a Holy Spirit? Amen