It’s at least 50,000. Maybe 60,000 or 70,000. Maybe even more.
Off the top of his head, Wayne Cook, pastor of First Baptist Church, Eclectic, and former youth pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church, Cullman, can’t really say how many packs have been sold. But it’s enough for him and his partners to describe BelieverBands on their Web site, believerbands.com, as “the best-selling Christian rubber band” on the market today.
And if you have children between the ages of 4 and 14, then chances are you’re well aware that there is a market for the item.
“It’s just been crazy; it’s really taken off,” Cook said of BelieverBands, multishaped, multicolored rubber band bracelets intended as “a Christian version” of Silly Bandz — rubber band bracelets shaped like animals and other objects. “We’re getting orders from all over the country and as far away as London, England.”
He started BelieverBands with Michael Pugh, one of the youth directors at Bluff Park United Methodist Church in Hoover and a former member of his youth group at Northbrook Baptist, last fall.
“[Pugh] called me one day and told me about this idea he had,” Cook said. “The idea was to use the bands as a gospel presentation, and so we worked out a deal and kind of put our money together.”
The evangelical potency of BelieverBands seems to lie in the symbols’ subtlety. With the exception of the cross-shaped bands, the bands featured in the company’s original Share Your Faith series — a once-bitten apple (signifying original sin), a crown (the reward of heaven), a green flower (Christian growth) and a white heart (a clean heart) — only become religious in a gospel context. Of course, flower- and heart-shaped bracelets also can be found in the packs of “secular” bracelets.
“The original pack has definitely been the most popular pack,” Cook said. “It just kind of transcends the trend if that makes any sense.”
Capitalizing on the national Silly Bandz craze — which, according to Cook, was started by the bands’ popularity in Birmingham — has been relatively simple, he said.
“Believe it or not, we got our first contract with Books-A-Million, and then we had a distributor that came through that wanted to distribute them to Christian markets, so now we’re in LifeWay and Family Christian Stores,” Cook said. “We’re not going to give up our ministry jobs or anything. But we’re looking at this as a business but also an opportunity to do ministry in a different way than we’ve ever had the opportunity to do it.”
Gina Sanders has seen the impact BelieverBands have on their target audience firsthand as a Girls in Action leader at First, Eclectic. And she likes what she’s sees.
“Well I think they’re a really good thing because it’s taking something the kids are going to do, something trendy, and it’s applying their faith to it,” Sanders said. “Not only that, it’s a good way for them to witness. You wouldn’t believe the stories they’ve told me about the different people they’ve given them to and how it opens a way for them to live out their faith and spread the gospel in their own way.”
Exactly, Cook said.
“What we’ve done is just take a trend that’s popular with kids right now and have tried to give it a relevant purpose.”
A lot more relevant than he first thought.
“Actually [Pugh] just counted it up and we’ve sold 200,000 [Believer Bands packs],” he said. “I knew it was high.”
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