Church Library Makeover

Get the assets of that special room back in circulation

By Robin F. DeMattia

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."

To spark people's interest, Swenson began writing book reviews. Today people come up to Swenson at church to discuss the books she has reviewed and to thank her for her suggestions.

For people who don't have time to read an entire book but who still want information in a book, Swenson purchased small Care Notes booklets from Abbey Press on topics such as grieving, death and dying, and praying. "These four- and five-page booklets give comfort and help to people who wouldn't go pick up a book," Swenson says. "My priest said it wouldn't work, that the Care Notes would just sit there, but they've worked marvelously. People take those materials."

Though her church doesn't offer a library budget, Swenson makes do by soliciting donations for magazine subscriptions and videos from individuals in the congregation.+

Try a New Approach
Members of First Congregational Church of Greenwich, Connecticut, went through a library makeover a few years ago after people realized the room was falling into disuse. According to Susan Craig, assistant pastor of the church, the congregation decided to change the library's focus from just a collection of books to a resource center for church school teachers, children interested in the faith, and people in need of information about issues like divorce and illness.

"One of our main goals was to take the church out of this building and take it into people's homes," Craig says.

For example, she says that many families don't know how to talk with a child about death and dying. So the church purchased children's books on those issues. And people are reading them.

"Parents are comfortable reading a bedtime story that includes those topics, so that can help open up a conversation," Craig says. Children's Bibles that simplify Old and New Testament stories are also popular as bedtime storybooks, Craig says.

Many books and workbooks that are borrowed from the church library are not returned, which seems to be a perpetual problem with most church libraries, but that doesn't bother people at First Congregational. "That's okay; it's our goal to help families," Craig says.

Turn on the Charm
A church library should be a warm, friendly place that invites people in—not a cold, dusty afterthought in an out-of-the-way place. "It is a huge waste to have a room called a library with a whole lot of extremely good stuff with nice labels that will stay on the shelves forever," says Carolyn Hardin Engelhardt, director of the Vieth Resource Center at the Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut. "If you don't do publicity, hospitality, and outreach, you can waste your time."

Engelhardt says some churches promote their libraries by rolling a book cart around to various meetings, coffee hours, and other gatherings. She encourages any effort that makes it easier for people to use resources in a church library. "If people have to make much effort to use a library, it may not be used," she says.

Engelhardt suggests that whoever serves as church librarian be "a friendly, welcoming person who cares about people and thinks about their needs and interests." This person should be willing to approach church members and say something like, "I saw this video the other day and thought of you; I think you might like to view it."

"The right person makes all the difference; the equipment in a library is very secondary," Engelhardt says.

Agree on a User-Friendly Policy
Be cautious about stocking library shelves with people's castoffs. "You can be pretty sure that won't give you a good variety of materials," Engelhardt says.

Don't be too rigid about book returns, either. "You want to be a good steward and not lose things, but you can get so hyper about it that people won't come in and check out items," Engelhardt says. "To me, it's unimportant to have a formal check-out process. Maybe you can do fine with a notebook in which people write down what they borrow."

People who determine library policy should ask some hard question about fines for late or missing books, she says. Do such fines support a church's approach to Christian ministry?

A church library should be a warm, fun, educational place to visit. By defining your mission and setting goals, you can transform your church library into a place that no congregation would dream of being without.

Robin F. DeMattia is a Connecticut-based freelance editor and writer who has contributed several articles to Your Church.

Help for Church Libraries

For more information on church libraries, contact:

• Church and Synagogue Library Association
  (800-LIB-CLSA or
  http://www.worldaccessnet
  .com/clsa) for dozens of brochures, such as Basic Library Supplies and Nine Ingredients For A Successful Library (15-25 cents per page). The association's annual conference in July offers workshops on topics such as religious reference, storytelling, children's sermons, religion on the Internet.
• Evangelical Church Library Association (847-296-3964).
• Lutheran Church Library Association (612-870-3623).
• Vieth Resource Center at Yale Divinity School (203-432-5319) for resources and materials to review before purchasing.

Top Ten Things a Church Library Needs

Though the needs of every congregation differ, experts agree that most churches could benefit from having these materials in their library:

1. Reference materials, (books or CD-ROMs), concordances, commentaries, Bible dictionaries, atlases, different versions of the Bible.
2. Books and videos about caregiving, coping with grief, dealing with elderly parents, family, marriage.
3. Books with good Christian humor.
4. Books for every age level, including good Christian fiction.
5. Books for meditation, devotions, inspiration, prayer.
6. Books that men will want to read, such as biographies, political commentaries, what to do when you lose a job or retire, and how to be a good father and husband.
7. Biographies or histories of you church and denomination.
8. For young children: toys, puzzles, heavy coordinating tapes, and video tapes.
9. Music and books on tape.
10. Computers to access the Internet and CD-ROMs and to catalog library resources.

Copyright © 1998 by the author or Christianity Today International/Your Church magazine. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or e-mail yceditor@yourchurch.net.
Mar/Apr 1998, Vol.44, No. 2, Page 44

	Subcategories of Management Resources
	Church Management Software Church Marketing Computer Bible Software Member Notification Systems Other Software Stationery & Clip Art Church Directories & Portraits Web Development