Our church library was started, I believe, about 40 years ago.  At the time it consisted of just a few shelves.  About 36 years ago, it was taken over by a dedicated lady in our church who grew the library to thousands of items and a good circulation.  When a new sanctuary was built, she was able to have a space for the library added right near one of the exits, just steps away from the sanctuary and that visibility has been such a boon for us.

Six and a half years ago, I was able to join the committee formed by my friend who took over the library, and now the two of us run it together, along with the help of about eight other invaluable committee members.  During those years, we have made many changes: weeding, re-organizing, taking down walls to create a more open space, painting walls, purchasing book-related artwork, utilizing a new cataloging system which better meets our needs, and so much more.

For a while we conducted pre-school story times during Sunday school or Church Time; we've run a summer reading program every summer since we started this venture; we've also sponsored adult reading challenges during the winter; we started producing a monthly newsletter in the fall of 2016. Our library is used by a good proportion of the congregation and there are plenty of people who come in every single week.  Circulation numbers are good and we believe we are meeting needs and encouraging our members.  We also have good support from our pastors, which we do not take for granted!

Our church bulletin states that our church's purpose is "Developing fully devoted followers of Christ".  Our library has adapted that statement for our own newsletters: as a part of our church's goal, ours is "Equipping fully devoted followers of Christ".  We try to keep that goal in mind in everything we do.

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Comment by Marty Woodall on January 30, 2020 at 10:52am

I hope to adapt this Idea for our library. Our pastor is not as supportive and wants us to change from a tiyical library to a "Hang-Out" gathering place with coffee, missions central, book store. I think he thinks if people sit in the library they will learn by osmosis. we are actually visiting other libraries to get ideas for what he wants. So far they have still been typical libraries. 

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