Southern Baptist Convention Enters Bidding for Commodore International

NASHVILLE (EP) -- In a surprise announcment today, lawyers for the
Southern Baptist Convention tendered a bid for the assets of
Commodore International, the ailing computer vendor which is
currently in Chapter 11 protection from creditors. In light of
Microsoft's acquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, announced
on December 1st of last year, and IBM's bid to acquire the
Episcopalian Church in the US, which was announced on January 4th
of this year, it seemed likely that more mergers and acquisitions
between computer companies and major religious groups, although this
would mark the first time that a religious group acquired a computer
company, rather than the other way around.

Neither Commodore nor the SBC would make an official comment on the
story, preferring to wait and see whether the SBC offer is accepted
before making any official announcements. Details of the offer have not
been made public, but analysts speculate that, in view of competing
offers for Commodore already on the table, the SBC would have to agree
to assume all outstanding debts of Commodore, as well as a cash
offering. Since the SBC is not traded on any major stock exchange, a
stock swap does not appear to be an option.

Some analysts speculate that Commodore and the SBC would make good
"fit." Commodore has never had particularly effective marketing,
preferring to compete on price. Thus, technically accomplished
products like the Amiga languished in the marketplace, while other,
less capable products took most of the market share. Then too,
Commodore offers a nice product mix to the SBC. "Baptists never
seem to be able to get along with one another," commented an SBC
source who asked to remain unnamed. "Any time you get two Baptists
together, you get three opinions!"  None of Commodore's product lines
-- the Commodore 64/128, Amiga, or MS-DOS compatibles, are capable of
running the same software. Some observers speculate that the SBC
will revive production of the discontinued Commodore 64/128 line,
in order to offer Baptists a full range of incompatible options.
In fact, some speculate that the SBC would attempt to re-enter
Commodore's original electronics market -- the desktop calculator.
"Hey, in some Baptist churches, a calculator would be pretty radical
technology!" commented an anonymous Baptist source.

Programmers at Broadman, developers of the Church Information System
sold through Baptist Bookstores, are said to be hard at work porting
CIS to the Commodore 64/128 and Amiga platforms. Some managers at
Baptist Bookstores are already trying to find room in their stores to
fit in demo models of the different computer lines. "I just really
don't know where to put them!" one manager wailed. "I just can't
really sacrifice the praying hands snow globes, or the glow-in-the
-dark Holy Family steak knives. Maybe I'll just cut back on the Guy
and Ralna albums, but that's just really hard to do!"

Commodore and the Southern Baptist Convention have some interesting
parallels. The Baptists originally began in Europe, although they
have achieved their greatest market penetration in North America.
The Southern Baptists are reported to have 14 million users in the
United States, with overseas marketing divisions in most countries
of the world.

On the other hand, Commodore began in North America, and have had
their greatest success recently in Europe, where the Amiga holds a
sizeable market share in Germany. "That should be no surprise,"
said a Baptist insider who refused to divulge his name. "A prophet
is without honor in his home town."

Copyright (c) 1995 Evangelical Press


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