Back in January (2019) our pastor and staff started the process of assessing all the ministries of our church as to how each on aligns to the mission, vision, core values, and discipleship process of our church. They determined that our library ministry needed to move in the same direction our church family is going.
On March 27th, I officially became the library team leader with no team members. The first task was moving the collection to a new room being created by a building program. With the services of my Sunday School class, we prepared the collection for the move and made the move in four weeks. All of us have jobs and have daily commitments so most of our work was done on Wednesday evenings. The actual move itself had to be done in a few days so many of us readjusted our schedules in order to make it happen by the deadline. To God be the glory!
Our next step was unloading the borrowed carts which made the logistics possible. That took three Wednesday evenings. Members of my Sunday School class plus a couple of others have continued to set up the space. Currently we are doing an inventory to confirm what items are on the shelves. We hope to finish the inventory during the next two Wednesday evenings.
Layered on top of these actions, we are also working out a new direction for this library ministry. We are dramatically changing the purpose and mission of the collection and the actions of the ministry. Our focus is on making disciples. As we finalize our concept, I will share our two-page description with you. We are very excited about what God is doing in our midst! Hopefully, we will have our grand opening on August 11 when our new building opens.
Grateful,
Morlee Maynard
Comments
Wow! I love the video. Very professional and full of valuable info.
I realize many of you do not approve of self-checkout. But for our situation, leaving the Enrichment Center open during the week, Sundays, and Wednesdays has been the only option for us since our people have no time on Sundays nor Wednesdays to drop by the Enrichment Center. Our FHBC Communications Team offered to videotape a family visiting the Enrichment Center and using self-checkout. I worked with them to write the script. Recently, they finally finished the editing process that was delayed due to lots of other items on their "quick" list. They let me proof it. We are very pleased with this videotape which premiered on our church website, Facebook, Instagram, and the MidWeekly a couple of weeks ago. We have experienced an immediate increase in returns, checkouts, and people checking us out. The video is featured on our Enrichment Center page on the church website. We are very grateful for all this team does with us!
https://www.fhbc.org/resources/enrichment-center/
That was a great video, and I love the way you are handling self-checkouts (with slips of paper in a box). I currently have a sign-out sheet, but I think I will try the box option. Thanks for sharing!
My how time flies! We have had a lot going on since August, the last time I posted something here.
Since August we have been focused on the collection. We have removed hundreds of books due to space issues and the need to refresh the collection with new items. We finally decided to give the deleted books to ThriftSmart where they give gift cards determined by the total weight of the books. In return, we get ThriftSmart gift cards which are sent to Tusculum Hills Baptist Church. Our church partners with them in ministry to refugees in their area. We currently have several boxes of weeded books waiting for the marking out process. We have a subteam that handles that work.
A subteam has been developing a reading group plan. We launched that group yesterday morning. We were pleased to have five people participate! We know of three more who plan to join us. The reason we are pleased with the number is that our church has never done anything like what we are doing with this reading group. We have two book clubs that are sponsored by our senior adult ministry. We are calling our group Philippians 1:12 Reading Group because it has a different purpose and approach than the book clubs. I picked up the approach from some of you. Click here to read the description of our plans. BTW, we discovered the title was misleading for some people who thought the group was just going to be reading one verse. We are going to just call it Reading Groups going forward.
Last night our church launched EQUIP FHBC. It is sort of like a seminary curriculum. I've seen some of your churches are doing such. We had more than 100 adults last night in the five courses that started last night. We purchased one copy of each of the text books for people to checkout in the EC. We put them right by the door. When I got back to the Enrichment Center after co-leading one of the groups, we had a couple of gals talking in the doorway. They told me all about what our pastor said in his group about the Enrichment Center. Apparently, he went on and on about what we are doing. His main point to them was that during sermons and during his course he will mention other books. He said the first place you go to get those books is the Enrichment Center. While we were talking he and our Teaching Pastor walked up. I asked him if he wanted gift cards or money as our appreciation gift for his generous promotion. He is a lot of fun and the best I've ever seen in a pastor supporting the ministries of our church. I was flying high as I left the building last night!
We will eventually have all the textbooks for EQUIP on a special cart by the EC door.
AND our church launches a year long study of the book of Acts. Both the sermons and the Sunday School classes will explore Acts with youth and adults. Last night we set up a special place to find all the items we have related to Acts including the commentaries. We are adding to this collection right now. We are all excited to see what God does through this yearlong journey.
Still praying for God to provide more EC team members!
This past Wednesday, August 4, 2021, our Enrichment Team met for the first time in more than a year due to COVID. A couple of us have kept things going, but the rest of our team is now ready to start serving together again. There are 9 of us on the team. Only 1 could not be with us due to a family trip.
We started our meeting with a review of a new team organization which we have not done before. I had them fill out a Google Form a couple of weeks ago to choose what types of things each of them would like to do during the current year. I used that to organize ourselves. See attached. I followed up the meeting with an email to each sub-team to discuss their assignments.
We spent the rest of our time creating our plans for 2021-2022. I had a handout for them that presented the updated church mission and vision which was launched on August 1. The second page had an updated edition of the Enrichment Center description in the context of the new church vision and mission. The third page was a worsheet with four columns for love, grow, serve, go. The eight of us paired off with each pair picking love, grow, serve, or go. They had 40 minutes to create actions we would consider to answer the question: How will we (the EC team) equip the church to love, grow, serve, and go? Each su -team found a place near our meeting room to think through our assignments. Then we returned to the room as each team wrote their suggestions on a large white board chart. Each sub-team led us in a discussion about their recommendations. Great first start! We closed our time together with a pray time asking God to guide us to what He wants us to do. We are now processing the actions through email.
See attachments. The ideation took place from 4:45 to 6:45 PM. As we met in pairs, we ate BBQ sandwiches. Standing in line for the sandwiches gave us a great time of fellowship.
EC Team Organization
FHBC Vision, Mission, Strategy 2021 2022 0521
The Enrichment Center Description 007292021
Idea Starters from Other Church Libraries
EC 2021 2022 Strategy working draft ONE
Since we started transitioning to become the Enrichment Center, our "to do" list included developing a way to communicate who recommends what in our collection. We discovered the idea of using recommendation slips of paper attached to shelving in a great bookstore in Black Mountain, NC. We are using the church branding colors of green and yellow.
Linda, forgive me for taking so long to respond to your question. I have dropped the ball on sharing our story. I'll try to do an update soon.
The library that preceeded the Enrichment Center most likely started in the early years of this church because the woman that started it was a charter member. I'm thinking the library may have started in the 1970s. I have not had time to research that.
Thanks for reading our journey!
Last night we had 14 people show up for our February Topic of the Month gathering even though snow was in the area. Our topic was Loving our Children. Targeted three groups of parents: Birth to Empty Nest; Special Needs; Grown Children. Half of our group were members of our EC team, but all 7 team members had personal interests in the topic. We are realizing the smaller group size is meaning more to the participants because they have more opportunities to talk. Take a look at our poster, flyer, and booklist.
Loving Our Children Poster
Loving our Children Flyer
Loving Our Children Book List HO
Now we look to March and April. Due to Easter and Spring Break, we are spending 2 months on a topic this time. Our March-April Topic is Loss: WHEN LOSS CRASHES IN -- Death, Divorce, Jobs, Dreams, Hopes.
With the shut-down last year, did you continue with the "Topic of the Month"? I would like to see the next month's flyer and book list. I am small church/ small library. I lost books over the year from no AC & no heat in the building. I needed to update all my groups before this crisis, but it is a bit overwhelming with the number of books I need. More members are returning to church activities and the library is not really ready for use.
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