Favorite Bible Verses Tail is Long, Big and Fat

I came across this Bible Shirts Cafepress store the other day and immediately thought is was a great idea...every verse in the Bible on a t-shirt or mug or fridge magnet or whatever. So anybody can take one of their favorite Bible verses and can share it with the world.

I don't have a favorite verse. There are some sections of the Bible that I hold very dear but I don't have an actual "favorite verse." How many people do have a favorite bible verse? I was thinking 10 or 15 percent of the population seemed about right, but I needed to do further research. I posted a simple poll question to ask500people.com..."Do you have a favorite Bible verse?" Over 400 people responded and it came out that 28 percent had a favorite Bible verse. That's a huge number! That's close to 100-million Americans. I'm thinking the possible market for favorite Bible verses on swag is pretty lucrative.

In the old days, back in the last millennium, a marketer would only concern himself with the heavy hitters, the big-time verses...like "For
God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life," or "And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men". Do up a half dozen different designs of the mass-appeal favs and call it good. You wouldn't spend resources printing up a run of t-shirts emblazoned with "And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon." Stick with the chestnuts and don't mess with the rest. That's the old way.

The thing about Cafepress, is that it doesn't cost a store operator any additional money to do an additional design for a product which may or may not sell. You don't have to commit to any initial press runs or even to any set-up fees. All your out is the labor of designing the product, which frankly isn't that tough, especially if you're just working with text. So now you could stock an "Aram begat Aminadab" t-shirt. You know who would think that is very cool? Aminadab! He would love it. Nobody makes stuff for Aminadab.

The Bible Shirts store has a lot of work to do...so far it looks like they've only swagatized the first four books of each testament. Its gonna be a big job. How many Bible verses are there? Unverified figures I lazily found on the web are that there are 31,103 numbered verses in the Old and New Testaments. So that's 31 thousand different verse layouts to be done, actually you can multiply that by 7 or 8 as different products need different layouts. I'm sure there is an appropriate verse to the situation...something about the virtue of slow and steady progress in attaining a goal. I didn't pay attention that day in Sunday School.

By the way, if the folks at Bible Verses don't get on the stick and get additional favorite Bible verses online, then I would suggest a church teen group take this on as a project. Start your own Cafepress store and get to work. Seriously, it would be a fantastic learning project for the kids and would at least fund the pizza.