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
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 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!