100 South Mill Avenue

Marketing is marketing, no matter the product [I have bold/italicised the points I find most pithy]:

Churches struggle to keep flock

Eugene Scott
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 2, 2008 06:35 AM

As the fringes of the Southeast Valley push farther out each year, the region’s mega-churches are struggling with changing demographics, declining membership and challenges in the way they minister to their communities.

The story “is as old as population growth and geographical expansion in America,” said James Hudnut-Beumler, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School.

Tri-City Baptist, at Southern Avenue and Price Road, has been in Tempe since 1971. But the city has been built out for years, and members are driving longer distances to get there, Senior Pastor Mike Sproul said.

But the church is also following the people. Tri-City has seen membership growth come from cities farther out in the Southeast Valley, though Tempe residents are joining, too, Sproul said.[...]Not far from Tri-City, Tempe’s Bethany Community, near Guadalupe and Price roads, is dealing with a sharp decline in attendance. Hundreds of members have headed southeast over the past 15 years.[...]“Some of the younger generation don’t want to go more than five or 10 minutes to a church[.]
[...]
“If they cannot adapt to the new culture of the community, they usually become an island to themselves or they shut their doors, because if they were going to relocate, they would have already relocated.”

From the Restaurant Association:
1. Newswire - Restaurant Performance Index Declined for the Fourth
Consecutive Month in December

- Operators reported negative same-store sales and traffic; Economy is a
growing concern. Restaurant industry performance continued to soften in
December, as the National Restaurant Association’s comprehensive index
of restaurant activity declined for the fourth consecutive month. The
Association’s Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) - a monthly composite
index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant
industry - stood at 98.7 in December, down 0.3 percent from November and
its lowest level since February 2003.

Must see this…

Saga of Arizona’s ‘Trunk Murderer’ on display at ASU

Srianthi Perera
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 30, 2008 09:35 AM

Rebekah Tabah, photo preservationist at Arizona Historical Foundation, didn’t know the significance of the black and white photos inside a dusty, unmarked box in the back of the archives. They looked important to me, so I started looking through them, and on the back of one of them was written, ‘Trunk Murderer,’ ” she recalled.[...] Winnie Ruth Judd (1905-1998), a medical secretary who in 1931 was accused of killing her best friends. The bodies of the women - Agnes Anne LeRoi and Hedvig “Sammy” Samuelson - were stuffed into trunks and checked as baggage on a train to Los Angeles.