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
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.
Hi Debbie! Loss was the next topic. Our gathering was well attended and the discussion was powerful as people shared their stories.
Grief Book List
Loss Flyer
Our Adult Engagement Coordinators team reduced to one person plus me so we decided to start something called Digging Deeper 1 on 1. We are continuing to use it through 2022 because it fits our church's disciple making strategy. It helps us reach those adults who cannot participate in group activities during the week due to work, family responsibilities, etc. All of our other discipleship actions are group-based.
Click here to open our EC web page. Click on Digging Deeper 1 on 1 in the green bar. Or scroll down.
Digging Deeper 1 on 1
Thanks for asking!
Our first Topic of the Month gathering took place last Wednesday (January 29, 2020). For something totally new and different for our church family, we are pleased with the results. We had 12 people attend. Only 2 out of the twelve are not on our Enrichment Center team but all of us have connections with people suffering with some sort of dementia. The two who are seriously dealing with a family member with Alzheimer's are very interested in our church family having more opportunities for them to fellowship with others in their situation.
Dementia Topic Flyer page 1
Dementia Topic Flyer page 2
Dementia Topic Poster
This past Sunday (02/02/2020) we launched the February Topic of the month: Loving our Children. Click here to see our Topic of the Month flyer. And check out our poster.
FHBC February 2020 Topic of the Month
February Topic of the Month Poster
Our transition to becoming a disciple making center had another step this week. (The next comment below tells about the other step we had this week.) Yesterday (January 9, 2020) our Mothers Day Out Preschool focused on the letter L so all three groups visited the Library for a tour. I met with each group for 15 minutes each. Must admit, we all enjoyed being together! We hope to start having the Enrichment Center open during one of the three days our church has MDO.
Our transition to becoming a disciple making center had two major steps this week. Sunday we started our first Topic of the Month opportunity. We are excited that we got a great place in our church's DiscipleLife catalog of Winter and Spring groups! You will find here page 1 of our flyer and page 2. One side focuses on January while the other side explains the strategy. Since this strategy is the first time our church library has ever done anything except provide a room of books, we know that we will start out slow in participation. After Sunday and Wednesday for the display, we have two people who checked out books. In a way this January topic is our trial run like a soft launch of something new. You will see on the flyer that the participants will gather on January 29 to share what they learned from their reading and meet each other. Our hope is that people in these end of the month gatherings will choose to continue to meet. Your prayers are needed as we experiment with a new concept for our church.
I will add a picture of the Topic of the Month display on Monday.
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