Yolanda Martinez is pondering if her church's library should have a mission statement? She asks us the following: Do church librarians have mission statements that they use?
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What a great question! Maybe we should write ours down. Verbally, I tell everyone that we don't exist as a ministry of our own but as a ministry to serve all other ministries of the church with materials that will transform our minds into the likeness of Christ. Along with that, on the library door we have the motto, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. --Romans 12:2".
Therefore, our collection criteria is anything that would benefit existing ministries of the church: children's ministry, women's ministry, men's ministry, evangelistic outreach, young adults, etc. Materials should be in line with church teaching and beliefs. The library staff reserve the right to remove material (even donated material) that doesn't meet our collection criteria. For example, we aren't a Catholic church, so I don't include Catholic Bibles in the church library. (Some donors don't know the difference, bless their hearts.) Someone donated a baby book for new fathers that contained profanity, so I pulled it. (It was another case of someone attempting to be "helpful" but apparently hadn't read the book entirely.) We are also open to keeping Christian Children's DVD's in the collection: VeggieTales, Superbook, etc.
Whatever your mission statement is, it should be something that helps to drive the library's collection criteria to both include helpful material and to exclude unnecessary material from the collection.
Yes, most definitely. Ours is:
For the glory of God and in support of the vision of First Baptist Atlanta and the Great Commission, the mission of the Media Library is to provide quality resources that lead individuals toward:
* A personal relationship with Jesus Christ;
* A lifestyle of discipleship; and
* A biblical worldview.
We have tweaked ours over the years but this is our current one
Monument Heights Library Resource Center Mission Statement
The Church Library Resource Center seeks to provide media resources, information, materials, and services to church members, leaders and others to advance learning about God; to stimulate Christian growth, to enhance the quality of worship, proclamation, witness, nurture, education and ministry.
Our library at Mount Cross Lutheran Church in University Place, WA follows up on the church mission statement of "Rejoice, Renew, and Reach Out" by using this as our mission statement:
We REJOICE in our ministry in Mount Cross Library to glorify our Lord Jesus Christ by encouraging the faith of our congregation through the written word. We desire to provide materials which assist members to RENEW mind and spirit and REACH OUT to serve each other and the community.