A new experience for our Enrichment Center Team. I got an email from a couple who are members of another church in our association. They asked if our church let non-church members use the library. We do, so we met in the library last Friday. We had a delightful experience getting to know each other and for them to get acquainted with our practices.
She is homeschooling their 10-year-old grandson. In their area, they no longer feel comfortable with their grandson using the public libraries. She has donated a few books to their church as a way to encourage them to start a library, but she does not feel led to set it up nor lead it. No response to her encouragement yet. I offered to help them if they do respond.
While we talked I introduced them to our books for adults. Both of them only read non-fiction. I shared with them our concept of Christian fiction being today's parables and pointed out our favorite authors. After we talked, she selected 10 books to checkout for their grandson and her husband sat down with one of our WWII fiction books. In addition to checking out 10 books for their grandson, they also checkout 2 fiction books--one for her and one for him. In follow up emails, she expressed interest in our reading groups.
How about you? Have you been able to engage people beyond your membership who do not have access to a church library? What are your experiences?
Morlee
Replies
Had a new twist to always having the library open for families to use during the week. The Senior Men's Book Club is going to start meeting in the Enrichment Center the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month at 9:30-11:30am. We are thrilled to have the senior men meeting in the EC because none of them use the EC. I'm not sure who leads this group right now so I need to email him with information about our self-checkout system hoping they will start using the collection.
I emailed our homeschooling grandmother who now comes weekly about this schedule. She was grateful to know about the men's club schedule. When we get to start having our monthly eNewsletter again, I will make other parents aware of this schedule. I do know about one family who comes once a week so I will email her asap.
Our homeschooling grandmother brought her grandson to experience the library for the first time. They returned some books and checked one out. She is so appreciative in her emails.
Our church's policy is that anyone who attends some activity regularly (services, Awana, Youth Group, GriefShare, etc) is allowed to borrow books from our library.
If we had a situation like yours arise, I think we might give some thought to whether we should change that policy, and how we would go about it.
It would probably also encourage us to require anyone who uses the library to fill out an application, so we have their complete information on file. This is something we've talked about doing but we haven't taken the plunge just yet...
We allow non-members to take items. We do ask that they fill out basic contact info but since ours is an open Library that people may use even when a staff member isn't present, we have no real way of monitoring. I guess we feel that if someone takes an item and we don't get it back, then God wants that person or someone around them to have access to it.
We have a former member who was a regular patron in our library. But she and her husband moved their membership to a church that does not have a library and she misses it terribly. So I gladly take a bag of books to her home and pick them up when she has finished them because she is not in good health, she is tickled to receive them, and we have a delightful visit!
Bless you for doing that.