Lisa Kern, librarian

To equip the saints for the work ofministry, for building up the bodyof Christ. Ephesians 4:12

HOPE

Books are a way for people to find hope. In fiction and non-fiction, you can find hope as you read about great saints of the past and present and how they overcame trials, drew others to Christ, raised their children for the Lord and helped the needy. As we move out of the pandemic, I’m looking forward to people coming back into the library to discover these things anew. We’re here. But the patrons are not.

We have experienced an incredible drop in circulation since we reopened in May. Before COVID, we checked out around 70 books a week, now we check out no more than 20 books a week. Linda and Paul Murphy have stepped in to work almost every Sunday since we are also down several librarians. They work during the week for several hours as well. Linda has been training a grammar school girl every other week to do library things which is a dream come true. We’ve been praying for the youth to be interested in being librarians since the few of us that remain are all AARP qualified… and have been for many years now.

We are hoping circulation picks up and are stepping up promoting ideas to that end. Time to get back to that normal place we all longed for over the last two years. We think of the church library as a much needed teaching tool. It supports the mission of the church and the walk of the individual by way of history, information and examples from godly, thoughtprovoking authors. It exposes children to missionaries and Bible characters and fosters in them a love of reading. We understand that times are changing and the way we do library is likely going to change too. We are not sure what the “new normal” is going to be, but we are sure that a church library is a needed thing “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” (Eph. 4:12) We pray you all see it that way and will come check it out.