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A church library can be a dusty collection of hand-me-down books, or it can be a vital resource for the congregation. The choice is yours.

Updating a church library—or starting a new one—will be more successful if you focus your time and money on the right things.

Lois Ward, president of the Church & Synagogue Library Association in Portland, Oregon, recommends that a committee of two or three people from your church work together, with the endorsement of the pastor and education board, to establish or upgrade a library. She also suggests that the church's budget include a small line amount for the library as a show of support.

Assess Your Mission
An important first step in any library makeover is developing policies and procedures for library use. "Sooner or later, questions will come up," Ward says. Do we include information about other religions or societal ills and needs? Do we include good Christian fiction? Do we accept gifts of books and other materials? Decide the answers to such questions in advance to reduce later confusion, Ward suggests.

Next, outline a mission statement that will help your congregation meet goals, such as promoting Christian education, developing teachers, and reaching out to the community. "Many community groups—AA, Weight Watchers, and TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly)—meet at churches," Ward says. "If these people can use the library, it's a great way for them to pick up information about caregiving, coping with stress, and other issues."

Build on Books
Though every church library should consider offering alternative types of media for adults and families, books should still be the featured attraction. Church library books needn't be stodgy or preachy, however. According to Ward, you can offer a variety of books that may not be overtly religious but are nonetheless fun to read to children and include an important ethic or moral lesson.

Ward says many adults are also searching for good books to read. She says they're tired of bestsellers, movies, and television shows with explicit violence, sex, and four-letter words. "They want to read something with a message," Ward says. Keep such readers in mind when you stock your shelves.

Include books that help churchgoers understand history, culture, and society, Ward suggests. Such books are especially useful for people who are involved in outreach projects.

Stock your library with multimedia products, such as CD-ROMs, videos, tapes, and laser discs, but not at the expense of books. "We must not go to the point where we spend all of our money on videos and ignore books, because there will always be things in books that are useful that we will not find in videos," Ward says. "We will always have people who want to sit quietly and read about something."

Kathy Swenson, president of the Connecticut chapter of the Church and Synagogue Libraries Association, echoes Ward's thoughts on books. Swenson, who has spent the last three years renovating the library at St. Paul's Episcopal in Wallingford, Connecticut, says, "My goals were to reorganize the library to make it more accessible to people, to increase the amount of reading people did, and to reach people who don't think of reading when they're facing a crisis."

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