Paul Jackson emailed me recently asking if preachers communicate titles of books they plan to include in their sermons. We grappled with this often-frustrating question through the years within other subjects. Let’s bring it up again. How do you work with your preachers about titles they plan to share during a sermon?
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We have a new pastor who is a strong supporter of our library (our beloved former pastor was also, but the new guy is more proactive). He has given us what I suspect will be the first of several long lists of books he'd like to see in the library, because he will use them in messages and/or his counseling. Also, our former pastor would sometimes look in our catalog to see if we have a book he was planning to mention, and if he did that, then he'd also tell the congregation that we have it.
And yes, we have done the same thing Morlee mentioned - hot-footed it to the library to have a book on display that was brought up during the service!
If your pastor isn't this intentional, I guess the best other thing you can do is to regularly ask if there are books which will be mentioned, and if you get a response, make sure you put them out.
Our pastors will occasionally recommend books during their sermons, but it's rare because a forum already exists for them to do so a bit more thoroughly in the evening service. Its beginning always includes general announcements, and recommended books for those who want to go deeper into the topic that was presented in the morning sermon. I've made it a priority to add the titles we don't already have to the collection before too much time has passed.
Additionally, knowing that many people are unable to make it to the evening service, the church summarizes the announcements, book recommendations, and prayer requests in an email that goes out to all members on Tuesdays. This gives us the opportunity to feature those books with a quick description, an image of the cover, and a link to our digital catalog when applicable.
It would encourage more library use, I suppose, if those books were in the pastor's hand at the time of the announcement, ready to be claimed by an eager reader. But in our current location, the library is literally at the back of the sanctuary (and it serves as additional seating, so people are already right next to the books in question if they care to look!). In future when our space is different, it might be worth asking for a heads-up in advance of the evening service so I can pull those books out for ease of access, but for now things are running fine.
Screen grab from the book recommendation portion of our email as a sample for those who are interested! vv
I had this happen yesterday. Due to the bad weather here last week I forgot to connect our focus display to the sermon. As I listened to the sermon I realized my oversight. So I searched our Atriuum On the Go app for books related to the sermon. Wrote down 5 call numbers. Immediately after the service I made a beeline to the Enrichment Center. Quickly found the 5 books and had them in the display before most people walked past the Enrichment Center.
Our Communications Director gets the sermon titles for each sermon series which she graciously forwards on to me. Most weeks I remember to change out the display on Wednesday. Our pastor loves that we have sermon related items in the focus display. Over time, our people realize they are encouraged to take items from the display.