Church Libraries Making the Shift to Today’s Church Cultures

April 8, 2021

Webinar Transcript

Church Libraries Shift .pdf

- Good morning to all, I am so glad that you registered and are participating. I appreciate it so much because I was not sure about how this was gonna be received. First of all, my name is Marty Woodall and I am one of the two Alabama, let me say strategist, I have to stop and think what I'm called now, for the state of Alabama. But I'm not going to be the speaker today, that is Morlee Maynard. If you don't know Morlee, she is the best friend any library has. First of all, she just loves libraries and has been a fighter for us whole time she was at Lifeway and that situation. But she also manages the Church Librarians Network. If you do not participate in that currently, make sure that you do, you can ask questions, get ideas, just all kinds of discussions that go on on the Church Library Network. So I want to make sure that you know about that and that you have access to that. I'm sure Morley will mention that and I believe it is in the notes for this session also. So I'm gonna turn it over to Morlee and let us get started. So thank you.

- Thank you, Marty. Thank you for letting me be a part of today and this is, the first hour was real fun and I looked for many of you, I see, were with us in the first hour. We have some new folks who've joined us and will continue to join with us as we go. And I look forward to what we're about to do. Let's see what happens now. You may wanna throw rocks at me at some point well, I'm not gonna feel it so feel free to throw them, that'll be fine, there may be benefits of not meeting in person, anyway. All right, let's look, I prepared the listening guide before I fully understood the webinar. So some of the things there Doug explained but let me give a couple of things. The handout, I'm sorry, is 20 pages long. I just went overboard and forgive me for that, or maybe not forgive me for that. The first four pages are your listening guide. The rest of it are the handouts and I've learned how to do cross-referencing which I just feel, I mean, I am just on top of all this now. It took me forever to learn how to do it but I did it, self-taught. Anyway, you're gonna see on the four pages, you'll see some links in blue. When you click on those, that will take you to the specific handout that it's referring to, or you click on it and it'll take you to a website that it refers to. And then on the handout, when you get over there and look at that at the bottom of the page you're gonna see the link back to where you were, yay. All right, at least it works on my computer, I hope it works on yours. Now, you may not wanna mess with that while we do the conference. Those of you who are watching the video of this, you will find the handout at some place. If you're getting this through Church Librarians Network, you will see the place you can get the handout. So if you get one messed up on that, my information is on the last page of the handout, my contact, my email, all of that for use on video of the last slide we look at here on the PowerPoint will be my contact information. Please contact me, that would be great, I'd love to hear from you. Now, all the way through, we're gonna have some discussion questions which I prefer to do in person, but we're gonna use chat. And so you want to open that, like we discussed and you will just respond with one word, two words, three, a sentence, however you wanna respond. But those of you on video, you will not have the chat view. And so I'm gonna be repeating what I see in the chat when we come to discussion times all the way through. So just kinda hang loose, first time maybe experimental time and then we'll go from there. Now, for those of you who missed the first session, I did this little speech at the first and we had it, I've had the people who were there explain it. When we're talking in this session, we're talking about emerging churches and that was the part of the other title. These shifts, for those of you who have the smaller libraries, for those of you have the mega libraries and those of us in the middle, you may have the feeling this doesn't apply to me, I could never do that. Well, I want us just for the next hour to make a commitment that we're not gonna think that way. Just kinda grasp on that these are shifts, S-H-I-F-T-S that we all need to engage at our context. We need to think where we are now and reimagine where we might be in a year or in six weeks or three years from now. As we said earlier, every church library started small. Those of you who have two shelves in the hallway, that's where most of us started. Now, we may not have been a part of the library then, but that's how it started, all small and through the years they've grown. Now in the past, we always just thought of the books. How many books were on the shell, that's what we considered growing. We got to get off of that. That is no longer the mark of success. And the churches are doing, our church families are doing the same thing. Your pastor and staff are hearing from their leaders that it's not attendance anymore. It's other things that we measure what we're doing. And so we need to join that and be a part of that thinking. So today, play with me here and look at each of these shifts as to what would that mean for us, for your church library. Don't let it mess you up thinking, well, why can't do that? Well, yes, it may be six weeks from now you could or there's some things you can do to start laying the groundwork for the shift. So let's kind of have an agreement we're gonna think of it in that mode and I hope you'll join in that thinking. And use the chat as we go as well. Are we all right? I think you know about, I think that covers the logistics. So let's jump in here, let's pray first. Heavenly father thank you for the opportunity you've given us now. We're gonna look at some changes that, shifting that we need to do in aligning with our churches and aligning with today's world. We pray that you'll give us open minds for that because we know you're in control of all of it and you're all about these changes. And we just pray that you will help us claim you and see through your eyes as we look through these shifts. This time is yours and we are most grateful, Amen. All right, so on your learner guide, number B, that's where we are. We're looking at these five churches who have, we're using them as illustrations of each of these shifts. Each one represents one of the shifts and we're gonna just, we don't have time to go into detail on each of them but we do have time to touch on them. And then you've got all this information in the back and you can do your cross-referencing later if you need to. The first one is Emmanuel Baptist church in Lexington, Kentucky. At the time, this was probably three years ago. I should've looked up to see when it was. Ron Edmonson was the pastor, he was one of my doctoral students at Midwestern Seminary. In a seminar, there were about 15 pastors, church staff people sitting there and I was using the disciple-making center as an illustration as a case study for discussion. I didn't even get into the third sentence and Ron pulls out his phone and he goes like this. And we all looked at him because that's a big no-no in a doctoral seminar or any class. And I asking, okay, Ron, what are you doing? He said, you just saved our church library because literally in an hour the construction people are coming in to tear it all out. And we just sat there stunned. And he said, I have our missions minister, was not the church librarian, it was the missions minister on the phone and I want her to hear it. And so I said, okay. And so that went on then to great discussion and we really had a neat experience. So what they did, they took the library and it came into become, it developed into the sending center. And you'll see there in your handout a link to an article that Ron did with us at Lifeway telling about that experience, and I'm giving you a link to facts and trends to see that article later on and tell what they did. Now, this is an illustration making a shift to the culture of the church and the library. And now it reduced the size of the collection because they had to make room for the space you see on the right, which is the mission center of the church. They took out a wall literally where the pictures being taken used to be a wall, now it's glass and there it doesn't have a door, it's always open. And so they still have, they have their Keurig and coffee and kind of stuff like that. They did start with the bookstore that lasted about three weeks and they decided that was way more trouble than they needed so they no longer have the bookstore part. And that expanded some of the spacing they could use for the library. But this is a situation where the church librarians were upset and bothered, this is the pastor coming to them with an idea. And it was hard for them because it was taking away books. And some of you've been in this situation and know that that's difficult, but here's the shift, it's aligning to the culture of the church. So for a minute, talk with me in the chat. How would you describe the culture of your church? What would be a word, is it an evangelistic? Is it educational? Is it a hospital for people who have from recovery? What would be words that you would describe the, well, I've lost the chat, wait a minute, here it is. Just pop on there on the chat there, open, share. We discussed this in our first hour, so those of you in the first era already got the words. We're not gonna spend time going through their thinking culture but the culture is the, what's the perception, what's the practices that your church does together that, is it friendly? They're all different kinds of types of churches that are all based on culture. Biblical, very good, thank you. And there are those churches that are all focused on Bible knowledge, that sense. So those churches have classes, that's what they call their groups, they're called classes. And originally when church libraries started that was really what all churches we're modeling, we're modeling schools. And so back in those days, the church library was part, the church library started as Sunday school libraries. And Dr. Frost had a big role in that way back in the day. Educational with focus on building disciple-serving community, very good, thank you, Regina. Marty, let's see local missions, foreign, local, very mission-minded church there for Marty's church. Anyse, church focuses international 12 language churches on campus, wow. Now, see Anyse's church culture is totally different than my church's culture and that's a point that I'd forgot to mention earlier. We need to keep in mind all we're gonna do now that church, our churches are unique. That's something that Will Mancini a few years ago wrote a book called "Church Unique." That book written by a young pastor who now has his full-time ministry called Auxano helping churches embrace their uniqueness. It gave permission to our churches to be unique which before that we all had to look alike. We had to smell alike, we had to sing the same songs, well, those days are long gone. So that's a point that we need to keep in mind going the rest of our time together. What works in my church ain't gonna work in your church, what works in your church ain't gonna, you make it fit your churches. Let's see, we've got a goal to plant 10 new churches. We've already planted one outside Las Vegas, way to go. Church planting is huge. And there are different ways that churches are doing church planting. I saw Faith had it along here and her church has locations or satellites or whatever the term is that churches are using. I worked with Brentwood Baptist church here a couple of weeks ago. They have, I think, nine locations and their main campus and then others. And while I was working with them, they talked about we need to set up the library in those, that was very, they came up with that, not me. It wasn't me suggesting it. The aha aha hit them and Faith has done that in her church. Now some of you've done that where the pastor came and told you you had to do that. And that was, oh, man, that's hard to do. Again, he's coming from his understanding or their understanding, the staff, of what the culture is, the church and where it's moving. That's where we've gotta be in touch with what that is and very much get on board with it and so on. So that's the first one, the shift from whatever we are now to moving to whatever the current culture is, and that is worth the conversation with your pastor and staff. And I would do it with several of them. Don't just do it with one, get what the words are and then think, what would we do? Now, let's look at the second shift. Purpose perception. This is going from a room of books to a gathering place. The connection center. This is First Baptist Church Taylors, South Carolina. Some of us have been there, we've done conferences there. This church had, the original library was in the middle of the campus, the middle of the building. Everybody past it going from Sunday school or small groups to the sanctuary and vice versa. The staff wanted to do a big renovation. My church just went through that. That's how we moved from one room to another. They, instead of moving, they stayed where they are but they took all the walls away. That wall you're facing in this picture was one of the original walls. That was the outside wall, I believe, or maybe it was one of the walls. There was more, so it was all bound into room. Now it's wide open and you'll see on your handout that you got a link to a page in the handouts, page five, that's written by the two librarians here who experienced this. Sadly, the staff told them they had a weekend to pack up all the collection because the construction was gonna start just like overnight. And we all know how hard that is. And so this wasn't an easy thing for them but they did a marvelous job of working with the staff and look what all I've got. You have a link at the end of the article, the page that they've written, there is a link there to the Church Librarians Network where you see other pictures of the gathering place or the connection center. And this is every Sunday morning for 30 minutes the whole church family meets here. They have fellowship where, this counters where they sort of danishes and coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. And it's in the library and it's all done with self checkout. So I encourage you to take the walls down and consider what would that look like if the church library became the gathering place. They may not be this broad, it may just be a part of it. We just have, instead of moving all the books from the previous room, we move a portion of them to allow, and not all the shelving so we have a space for chairs for a comfortable place to visit, even have small groups. So the first shift is aligning to the culture. The second shift we're dealing with is moving from a room of books to a gathering place. Now, right now you may not, there's no room here to gather. Don't think right now. If you have that concept and something your pastor and staff are interested in, amazing. You're talking their language when you talk about gathering because that's relations. Everything is relationship right now. Mainly 'cause of the pandemic. Relationships is what's gonna bring back people back to our churches, into our buildings. Right now they're just gonna do Zoom or live stream. But when the relationships pull them back, that's a whole nother ball game. And that's what pastors and staff are all caught up in right now. So, and believe me, I hate to use that term room of books, but that is one a lot of our pastors and staff just think it is. It's just a room of books and some of them will go on and say they're never used because when they walk by they don't ever see anybody in there. We need to make that shift. What would that look like? What would that be like? Question here, what other kinds of purpose needs shifting with libraries? This is a purpose, gathering is a purpose. I like to think of it as multipurpose, that our spaces can become more than just one purpose. That it has several things we do. So pop over there on the chat and put some ideas there. What are some purposes you may be experiencing or thinking about for the library? Anybody got one? We talked earlier about information, a place to provide a purpose is to provide information for the church and we can do that in all kinds of different ways. Another kind of thing is fellowship. You're gonna see in pictures of the enrichment center our puzzle, jigsaw puzzles. It's a place to gather around and leisure time and work on a puzzle and talk about it. Let's see, Cheryl's got our goal by the end of the year is to put a puzzle table and open an area for chairs for sitting and meeting, that's great. That is opening it up. Now, some of you are in a situation that you're probably sitting there thinking, yes, but we have a Sunday school class that meets in our room every Sunday morning and that's a hassle for you. Yes, but those people are getting to experience the library. Yes, they're in there for Sunday school but it's a good thing. Think positive instead of negative and throw a rock at me at the same time. All right, Lavelle's got a place for children. Wow, that is huge. A lot of us are hindered by that because we're located too far from the children's area. We have very few children come in our room on Sundays and Wednesdays because we're so far from the children's areas, but we're working on that with something called a book truck and we'll go to them. Say Marty's got display area, that's a purpose. That's to have displays that relate to the church. Maybe not just related to books in the library, but displays that are doing missions or you've got your missions information, Marty does in other words. Let's see, Anthony's, we work with ESL leader to encourage the international parent to read to their children from English books. We send children books to their meetings, they can check them out or you can keep them, love that. That's a great connection with the another ministry in the church. And that's part of this first purpose and being per this. Now notice I use the word perception. It's kind of in the eyes of the beholder. The perception may be it's just a room of books. But it's really not that true, we want it to be something else and so we find out what would communicate. Let's see, Joy has sponsoring a speaker on diversity and feature books to go along with it. Wow, that's awesome. We talked about earlier having speakers come in and sponsored by the library. And that's, this is something we you don't have to have them in your space. If you have two chefs, you can't have it right there by the shelf, or maybe you could, spend time with bingo hallway is. But you can use one of the other rooms but sponsor it by the library and invite people to come on different topics. She's talking about diversity, what a relevant conversation for today. And different needs, find out what the needs are of people that what they would be interested in doing. Very good, let's move to number three and keep that going as well. Number three perception deals with the collection. Everybody knows, those in Alabama know this is Evanelle's library. Actually it's her church's library, the serving center. This is, there are several things we could have related with Evanelle's library but we're just gonna talk about the shift they made at some point. Going from fiction online, this was years ago, to a balance collection. Now, this is when I kinda go back and forth with because okay, I really, we're buying a lot of new books and DVDs for our collection right now. I wanna get things people will use. Right now it's gonna be in fiction area and biographies. But, and we got all these Two Hundreds over here that are never checked out. Why would I add to that collection? Because nobody's using that. Well, the perception is, of my church, is it's all fiction. They know that others there but they don't realize what's there. Max Lucado, we got a lot of his stuff. It's a part of what we call promotion of making people aware that it is more than fiction. But on the other hand, we have to define what fiction is and help people understand that fiction is more than just entertainment or leisure reading. I told the group of four, I've wrote an article for our women's ministry and it's titled Christian fiction matures my faith. And I get, I really do, and I have to be careful how I word it, I get more out of reading Christian fiction than I do reading Two Hundreds because of the way I learned. I love this context of the story of showing how God worked in someone's life and how, hey, that might be happening in my life, I've never thought of it that way. You and I get that but our people in our churches don't understand that Don't understand how that works and what that would be, and it gives a new purpose for fiction. I had a former, a pastor friend who asked me one time in the hallway, what is Christian fiction? And I thought he was kidding me. And he was serious. So I explained, why do you use stories in your sermons? And he said, all my stories are true. Okay, while we continued and had a good conversation about the role of Proverbs, of not Proverbs, of the way stories work in the parables that Jesus used. And Christian fiction for me is today's parable set in our context for us to understand what God is doing and how he works in our lives. And yes, I will be posting that article, I guess that's what you're asking about on the Church Librarians Network because I want us to have a discussion about that as well. And if you're not on the Church Libraries Network and would like, you can also, you've got my email, email me and I'll send it to you if you can't join that for some reason. Let's see, Joy's got have an open house having a scavenger hunt of resources offered to purchase required books that previous students do not wish to keep. There you go, good idea. Helping people know what's there beyond the fiction and connecting from the fiction over to the Two Hundreds in some way. That's good, that's real good idea. So the perception here, let's ask that why is it in your collection that there's maybe one area that dominates the others? Let's see, Marty's put supporting homeschoolers, huge. The two, the over on the other, beyond the fiction, what are the books they need, great, very good. And all of us now probably have homeschoolers in our fellowship, our church families as well and going from that point. What else, anybody have another one to pop up there? Evan Dale's library is open during the week. And that is perception to deal with. We unlocked the door. Ours is open all the week and have self checkout. People don't have time y'all on Sunday. Y'all know that better than I do. Children's chapter books, right, yes. Cheryl's got that one. Look for what those are, and that's something we need to make note to put a thing on the Church Libraries Network. What are those chapter books that we ought to consider? That's very good. All right, so the first shift deals with culture. The second one deals with the perception or the purpose that we're dealing with. And then, and it may be your shift is not to be a gathering place, it may be something else. The whole idea is the purpose, thinking what the purpose is. Does it align with the mission and vision of the church? And then this one is with the serving center is shifting from the collection of perception of fiction only. Now you will find a link here in the handout to a page that many of you've already seen that Evanelle did for us of all their services. And she has this huge work team or this huge serving center team. She has all kinds of people doing all kinds of different things. Most of us have not gotten there yet. We're still working, I, you know, wow. I don't even have a work room. We get to use a room down the hall. And so you do what you can, right? So that is, now let me say this, put yes or no in the chart. Is your pastor recommending nonfiction during sermons? Does he mention your church's library as a reference to go to or does he even bring up books at all in his sermons? Cheryl's yes, missionary books, good. I have a hunch. I guess I could have done polls so we could have found, find out how many, and that may be something we'll talk about on Church Libraries Network. The public schools or any school refer the children to the library and children go. I think we just mentioned that earlier. What if our pastors did that? I have a new pastor and he mentions books all the time. I just need to get connected with him better so that he'll say, hey, you'll find this in. And I need to find out early so I can get it before he preaches that sermon, right? Some of you are way ahead of me on that. Let's see, he brings up authors, but not our library. Yeah, see, that's the next step. That's a shift for us, how do we get that done? No, but he occasionally mentions books, yeah. It's maybe not every sermon, but when he does, now, what I do is take it down and I've bought, since I've started listening to him, I have bought those books. In fact, this guy that told me he was gonna try our online, he was one who saw the book that our pastor mentioned two weeks ago and he saw it in our display and he checked it out because the pastor recommended it and he remembered it. Let's see, Marty says occasionally but when he talks about an author, I'd come pull and put it out on library Facebook page, that's great. You make it aware to your people that you have it, that it is in the church's library. That's great, very good. All right, so that's, let's see, the second question I got there. Let's look at that one, is the collection perception a struggle for you and your church? Yes or no. Is the collection perception a struggle? Do people think it's one way or another? That may be negative. That well, they're not gonna have anything for me. If the word got out that we changed our leadership, that the Richmond Center was gonna be all Sunday school books, like that was bad. We've I think overcome the negative stuff we've had going on. But there is a perception maybe you don't even know it's there. That is a part of that. Let's see, Regina has got our pastor has pastor picks, wow. He does that monthly, love that. That's a great idea, I need to write that one down. We compile a list and get the books. That's good, that's great. And be a part, actively working those on, don't just do it with your pastor. If you have a church staff like a youth minister, age group ministers, do the same with them, find out. In fact, our children's minister gave us the longest list of books to purchase. Now let's see, ours has become a little unbalanced in F with politically slanted books. Wow, there you go. I doubt you're the only one, I mean, I doubt that's unusual. Today is a funny time and a difficult time when it comes to that. That's something to think about. Does that become a division in your church? It has been a division in mind. How can the library ministry heal that division? Bring people back together. What would that look like? Wow, that's good. Let's keep that one chatting. All right, let's go to number four. I saw Hope Ferguson is with us. Thank you, Hope. And if we had the microphone on, we'd have Hope talk about what she's done here. This is an illustration for us of location perception. To become user-convenient. This is a big issue. A lot of us have our location and the building works against us and that's perception. People don't go, I've got, too far away from the youth area, too far away from the children's. You all are dealing with that stuff too. And so the perception of making it available, we're saving money to buy three book trucks, carts and we'll start taking, and I'm gonna use what's called engagement coordinators who will do that, it won't be me. We're gonna have some teenagers be the youth engagement coordinator and coordinators. And they will decide what books we're gonna buy for youth. And they're gonna, even I'm gonna do some intergenerational work and have them learn how to process the books. Put the spine labels on, the barcode, do all that. Not us, we want the teenagers to do all of it. And then they will take the book truck to what is our contemporary, now it's called modern worship area because that's where the best time for the teenagers to do that. It's not during their Sunday school time or in their building. It's at the end of a worship service, that was their choice. So think outside the box. This is the Youth Disciple Making Library in Hope's church building. And this is where they're hanging out in their library and their area, very good. There's all other kinds of issues we deal with with location and things we need to keep dealing with, let's see. Peggy she's written, we have a lot of women readers but I struggle with finding books men will read. Luring men into the library. Let me encourage you to find a guy, that's our men's engagement coordinator. He loves to read, I've got a couple other men that love to read and they are luring the men. They are helping us decide what books to buy. Another man named Stan is part of this. They are talking it up and engaging people, men to do that. It's not gonna be a bunch of women to encourage the men to read. Now, there are a lot more men that we know of who love to read by the way. We can make an assumption they don't but they do. And a lot of us know that perhaps from who we're married to. Let's go to number five perception. This is a division, this is gonna, I'm gonna step on toes maybe, I hope not, I don't mean to. And again, you can throw the rocks. This one deals with mine versus ours. And in a way it plays out, we're gonna combine this discussion with the previous one that I just skipped as to location issues play out. You can go on and write that if you had some thoughts there about location issues. But when I, when our former library and now, this is the enrichment center, the one I work with. This was a big issue before we changed teams, it was mine. And some of you know what I'm talking about that it is easy for us as we work with the collection and spend so much time and energy to think of it as ours. But it can never be considered that. And we've gotta watch that so we don't fall into that trap. And we don't just get new books that I want to read, we're getting books that the congregation wants to be a part. And this collaboration is a huge word right now with pastors and staff. Will Mancini, that I've mentioned, his first chapter of "Church Unique" will make you very mad. It may, I wanted to throw it across the room. I may have even thrown it because it, he threw everything I've ever done and thought and valued about church under the bus. We shouldn't be doing all these things. And then I decided, okay, I'm gonna read this book. Grit my teeth, and I'm gonna read it, and I did. And I'm glad I did because he unpacks it and it makes so much sense. He gave a generation of pastors and staff, my generation and younger commissioned to be unique. And so we need to think this collaboration, that's in his last chapter, coordination and collaboration. Crazy, where we work together. And that's where we've gotta get out of our little shadow here and emerge and collaborate with the church staff with the pastor and find ways to do that so that it is ours. First thing I did when, we hadn't even been working on, we did the move that took January in 2019. And then we did, I met with them in February and I literally, physically gave the library to the staff. I met with, there were probably 20 of them that are our education staff. And I wanted it to be ours because that was so, many of them had never been in the library before. And we had a wonderful conversation and planning and they came up with ideas I never would've thought of. And they came up with the name of it and it was their idea, it wasn't our idea. We wanted to call it the bridge, they didn't like that. Well, so we go, 'cause we're on a hallway that's like a bridge. Here we go, we're collaborating in every way. So let's look at that, let's think about this shift. Are you dealing with the situation with your church staff and pastor and the library team, you're not able to have that conversation? You can just put yes or no. Maybe you don't wanna admit it, nobody's gonna see your, the recording's not gonna have the chat. So it's just gonna be us. Think about what that is, is there a barrier there? You're looking at this, Cheryl's commenting on our signage. What book? Oh dear, I'm not sure what that meant. What was I talking about? Oh, "Church Unique" is the title of that book. Will Mancini, "Church Unique," yes. Highly recommend that to all of you and your pastor may already have a copy, it's been out as well. Now, the signage, yes, and the blue really, our whole deal was to be part of the branding colors. Many of your churches are doing like ours, you have a brand and that means you have colors. Ours are green and yellow. You'll see that maybe in some other pictures that you see of what we do. We've done, in fact, everything on our webpage now carries the brand. And so we are seen as part of the church. If you have a brand, if you have a communications director, he's in charge of the brand. Go talk to him or her about that and be a part of that. Let's see, Anyse is, that was no, I assumed that but now I'm lost on what the, that was on the collaboration issues. You don't have a problem, some of you do. And no, our pastor comes in and uses our commentaries, very good. He also sends in his intern to use the library frequently. One thing we did, and you might consider, right on the other side of that wall is our connection center. And that was where our library was. And right off, I worked with the staff and they let us put our commentaries in there. And so literally the little corner of the picture here, that's all the commentaries that are in here. We have all of our newer commentaries are in the connection center. It's kind of like a live, the feel of a home, that seating area has sofas and all that kind of stuff. And that's really worked, it also has a big table where people who are gonna study or whatever that's where they go. They don't come in here to study, they go in there 'cause it's rarely open and it's used in during the week. Now it's being used some more but. Let's see, most of our pastors support our library, their kids use library frequently, oh, that's cool. You've got your foot in the door and you've got the relationship, that's very good. Very good, alright, so let's keep that chart in. Now, there's another purpose that I picked up here with the enrichment center dealing with the gathering place that we talked about earlier. Here's our puzzle. It's on a low shelf thing that you see there. This is a place, and the staff is wanting, that we're gonna work together to find some people who are really easy about talking about faith and also easy about answering questions about the Bible and so on. We're gonna get them to hang out here on Wednesday nights. And the pastor and staff are gonna be sending people, our new believers and others who have questions just go in there and work puzzling and Gary's there. He loves to talk about faith. We're being proactive about those conversations because many of our people in class groups that it's not interactive, it's a lecture and then when it's over, everybody leaves. And so we wanna be a part of doing that and be a part of that. You'll see the puzzle listed here are multipurpose. You'll see next to the picture, or you seeing that here. There's also at the end of that you see this picture here on the counter, behind the puzzle is an open, it's one of those books that have lives but no words. That is what we're calling or you share what's going on in your life. That hadn't worked yet, gonna take us five years to communicate it. But it's where, someplace in our building you can go and write what God's doing in your life and be a part of that as well. All right, and you can click over to pictures on Church Librarians Network about other pictures we've got. So do you have multipurpose rooms in your building now? Are there rooms like fellowship hall better used for lots of different reasons? Your space may have Sunday schools so you already got a multipurpose room. That's where this number six shift is measurement shifts from number of collection items to the spiritual growth. Now, I'll be honest, I have no idea how to measure that. But I mentioned it earlier you're a pastor and staff are being led to not use Sunday school attendance as a measurement, or any kind of attendance anymore. There are other ways, and there, this is one of those. And the church, you don't come up with how to measure it. You find out how your church is measuring it because your pastors already, and your staff are already moving in that direction. Michael Kelly has resources that help, he has this eight signposts. My church is using that for measurement and they have a resource that comes with that. That helps you measure the spiritual growth of your church. This is a whole new thinking of how to measure the health of our churches. And I wanna bring it up here with you that there are ways that our ministry as church libraries can participate in that perception and that measurement. It's no longer the bragging. Yes, we can continue bragging having books, doesn't matter. It's what's happening as result of reading those books. That's where the spiritual growth comes in. Now, the roles of the library we've already talked about and we're gonna, in the first session, we're gonna revisit those for a few minutes here just to kind of bring in what we've been about as the providing information to the congregation. The education, whatever that look disciple-making, being aware of what that looks like, the entertainment value of what we've got going on in the, what we provide as Christian, entertainment that's safe for families to use. Public libraries may have different things there as well as the fellowship. Those are all very, very useful and important. The challenge here is what's at the end of this page. I have summarized these shifts, these six shifts. There's the alignment to the culture, a room of books to a new purpose, whatever that would be. The perception is purpose not just it's a room of books. Collection perception, it's not just fiction or whatever the church thinks you've got, it's more than that. It's encouraging the use of more than that and then it's the division between ours and mine and dealing with how that works. And then the last one is the measurement of success or the measurement of growth. It is not just leaning on the number of books you've got and how that works and how that might look. In your handout you will find information about the eight signposts and it gives you a link. You'll see how we play with that and continued with that. The next page of your handout, page four, we're not gonna have time to go through this. I threw this in as something for you to work on later. You might wanna work with it with your team or just you go through it first. Some of this is very familiar to you, you've seen this and other conferences. It's how to transform the current library team to a disciple making center. or social library concept out to make those transitions. It's not gonna happen overnight. A lot of the things that we're sharing about the enrichment center, it's all in process. It's not fully ingrained yet, it'll take years for us to ingrain. And that's true, all of you have been there and be part of that. At the end of the page there, it's brings up being prepared and communication challenges. You will have some challenges because you're, like changes. Every time you do a change, you're gonna have challenges. And then the behind the scenes kind of stuff. The A point there, this is the bottom of page four. Lots of people love this kind of service. It may not just be processing books, it may be other things that you might be considering. Go beyond your current team. Don't think that you got to do all these, no. That's me, I don't do all these things. I do this mail. Others are gonna be involved to do their pieces. And our church, your church all has an emphasis right now on serving. Step up and make them aware, hey, what are your gifts? What would you be, what would you consider? The second one there, software, yes. Right now you might think can't do software. Well, give a second thought to that. What would God have you do? How would he have that happen? The funding deal that, let's see. I've got that, I'll skip through that. Talk about the engagement coordinators back, I've got that on page three. Page two, where do I have that? Anyway, somewhere on the handout it talks about funding. Consider grant money. Your local, find out if your ministers will let you do this, your finance committee. But retailers very often have grant money. All you do is fill out a form, tell them you wanna add a computer to your church library and need money for that and fill out and do what information they need. Another one is affiliates. You go to Christian book website, you scroll down to the bottom, you will see a link to their affiliates. We have an affiliation with them for Church Librarians Network. When you buy something off of Church Librarians Network through our link, Church Library Network gets a kickback on that purchase. You can do that for your library. Amazon as it. Amazon has a higher percentage of the kickback for Christian books. But they're all kinds of website affiliates that you can be part of and get a kickback on it. If I'm gonna help a publisher sell a book, I want them to participate in helping me buy books to put it into recommended. And that's where these affiliates can come in handy and be a part of that. Now, have I set that up for the enrichment center? No, I haven't done that yet, but I'm going to. And I encourage you to look into the affiliate relationship. And then memorials, we've done those for years. Be honest, the staff wanted us to quit doing memorials 'cause it's a lot of work and it kind of ties you into the books. Well, you know what? We moved all of the memorial books. That's what we ended up putting in the enrichment center. That's how many Memorial books we had. And so we moved that and now we're replacing the older books with the newer books. We're keeping the memorial plate but the new plate in the newer book. So there's a way of doing that and a lot of people love to remember people, honor people through books in the library. So I think we've covered all the bases here and you see the information difference. I would encourage you to look and not let the budget be a limit for you as you go on whatever. Let's see over in the chats. We're looking for someone to do our social media, Facebook. Great, that is, you don't have to do that. Find a teenager. Oh wow, they get that, they sleep on it. It's, that's no brainer for them. That's the kind of thing, look for things, people who would fill some gaps that doesn't fit you or the people on your team now Get all ages, get men and women by the way. We're having more and more difficulty recruiting volunteers, especially among young families. Most of our library volunteers are 55 plus. Let me encourage you, yes, that's true. And it's even over it for me. It's easy for us to think of our friends. Connect with your children's minister and have them recommend people. They of course are having trouble finding volunteers now. Believe me, finding all those places to teach, it's a huge problem because of the pandemic. But I am finding like, I want a children's engagement coordinator to do our book club this summer. I'm going with the children's minister to tell me who to ask. I'll do the asking but she's telling me, she knows the people, I don't. And so kind of get beyond, break down the walls, go to the women's minister. Hey, in fact, the women's, believe it or not the women's minister at my church loves doing our displays. We don't do them, she does them and she's engaging young women to do them with her, that's her motivation. Find out who has those skills and wants to do them. And think beyond the box. Our time's almost out, let me remind you that the back page, and in fact I've got right here. There it is, we have my, that's my contact information. Gives you the Church Librarians Network which is my email but it also gives you the website which I didn't give you either. Anyway, if you will just Google Church Libraries Network, it'll be the first thing to pop up. And because we have so much, we've got right now 1,922 people on the Church Librarians Network, actually 23, we had someone applied during the first hour. So I hope you'll come and be a part of that. And any, if you call me, leave a message. I probably won't answer, I've got somebody who's always calling me on robo calls. So feel free to contact me and let's keep this going. I look forward to you all using the handout, linking to the other links and being a part of doing that. Anyse, least one more comment here. I train homeschool children to be library workers. Yes, that's an audience I'm going after. They are allowed to check in and chill. They're also often available during the week. And that is true, look for those homeschool families and they're looking for projects. That'd be good. Thank you so much, let me close this with prayer. Heavenly father, thank you for what we've just done. We pray now we relinquish all that we just did and ask that you will take and work with us individually as to what you would have as see. It's in your name we pray and give thanks and we relinquish our library ministries to you, Amen. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Y'all been great, appreciate all the chats and those you're watching video, thank you. And pray that you will find all that you need as well and feel free to contact me, thanks.