Church libraries checking out

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 18th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler. This week on Concurrently: The News Coach Podcast, co-hosts Kelsey Reed and Jonathan Boes respond to feedback from parents and educators. Here’s a short preview.

BOES: Our first piece of feedback comes from Deborah. And she is writing to us about the episode we did on school choice where we were joined by Amy Auten.

REED: Deborah says, "I listened to your recent episode on school choice, and I want to thank you for your thoughtfulness. In particular, I appreciate the reminder that fear cannot be the motivating factor in our choices. I noticed, however, that public school was portrayed mostly in a very positive or at least neutral light. And perhaps because I'm from California, I see public schools very differently. I've had very different experiences in the public school system that led me to resign from teaching English at a public high school to homeschool my own children. In reading Christ centered curriculum to teach my own children, I realized half of what I was teaching to my students was just awful. Should Christian parents consider how curricula points to or detracts from God as truth. Current public school teachers have been trained by some very anti-Christian universities. What content do they transmit, even if they have hearts that long to serve God?"

Wow. I mean, this first email from Deborah was one of the best ways to just continue to challenge us to think carefully about how we engage our children, how we engage the schools that they're in, and even to do deeper work for understanding content and language and how can we know truth?

REICHARD: You can listen to Concurrently wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at concurrentlypodcast.com.

Well, from schools to libraries. Yesterday, you heard from a Florida mom who shares her love of books with her children at a church library.

BUTLER: But what happens when the church library closes? WORLD’s Myrna Brown picks up the story in a part of the country where that very thing is happening.

WORLD Journalism Institute Assistant Director, Naomi Balk helped with this story.

DENISE ROBERTS: I took my grandchild to the public library and ended up with a book about two mommies.

MYRNA BROWN CORRESPONDENT: Standing before a group of her fellow church librarians, Denise Roberts tells a story that still haunts her.

ROBERTS: And I didn’t realize that and I just handed it to her. And my daughter-in-law said, did you give her this book? And, of course I felt quite bad because I didn’t look at the title. It didn’t occur to me that I would have to look at the title in a board book.

Roberts is not only a book lover. She’s a second generation church librarian.

ROBERTS: My mother was actually the librarian and had been for 30 years. And then in 2013, she asked me if I would be the librarian and I told her I would do it differently than her but that I would be willing. And I knew nothing.

But what she lacked in experience, she possessed in resourcefulness. First, Roberts partnered with a fellow church member who studied linguistics and library science in college. Then in 20-16 she joined the ECLA, The Evangelical Church Library Association. A 53-year-old fellowship of individuals, churches, publishers and library suppliers.

AUDIO: [CONFERENCE CHATTER]

Today, Roberts is hosting about 50 of her fellow church librarians at her church in Portage, Michigan. It’s their annual Fall conference.

ROBERTS: So please find a seat quickly so we can get started.

Sitting in padded folding chairs, church librarians from Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois take turns sharing their victories.

AUDIO: I want to read you an email that we received . I just want to say thank you for having an array of books for me to choose from in the library.

their discoveries…

AUDIO: There’s a lot of wonderful nonfiction books I can get in people’s hands that will be real help to them.

…and their struggles…

AUDIO: It’s just hard to sift through all of the titles and all of the authors and all of the publishers and all of the agendas and even books off of the award list you can’t trust anymore.

SOUND: [CONFERENCE CHATTER]

This year, attendance at the conference is low. Roberts calls it a sign of the times.

ROBERTS: It was a huge opportunity for librarians and then it started to get smaller and smaller as so many of the churches began to remove their libraries.

Roberts says she knows of at least ten churches in nearby Grand Rapids that have either closed their libraries or had their budgets slashed. The reasons vary,from a lack of pastoral support to church librarian burnout. Church space is also an issue.

ROBERTS: I read about a few libraries recently who needed the space for a nursery or needed the spaces for another Sunday School class. And so they looked at that as a bigger importance than having a place for books.

Carlene Rhode and Julie Doby are church librarians in Madison, Wisconsin.

AUDIO: We have had some of the pastoral staff say to us that they just don’t feel like this is a valid ministry. The location of our library is telling. We are up on the balcony. There is no elevator. A lot of our readers are seniors and they are not going to be climbing the stairs. And we do not have any children’s books in our library and that breaks my heart.

And what about librarians serving in other parts of the country? Are the doors of their church libraries closing, too?

MORLEE MAYNOR: No, and my real filter for this is the Church Libraries Network.

That’s Morlee Maynor. She lives in Franklin, Tennessee and runs the Church Libraries Network. It’s a website she created in 2001, back when she served as a library specialist for Lifeway Christian Resources.

MAYNOR: There are 2,035 members as of this morning. They post questions and they share ideas and post pictures of their libraries. It’s a very interactive kind of website for church librarians.

Maynor says she gets membership inquiries from church librarians around the country and in some parts of the world.

MAYNOR: The Northeast I get very few, that is true. Now Northwest, I’m getting lots of new members to the Church Libraries Network. But the South, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia to some extent. I’m getting new members.

Back in Michigan at the church librarians conference, Randy Morgan is one of the few men in attendance. He says while the future of church libraries hinges on pastoral leadership, it doesn’t have to end there.

RANDY MORGAN: Take the books that’s objectionable from the library, go to your pastor or go to your board chairman and say there’s a mission field out there that’s our kids. This is the junk they’re reading. We need a better library.

AUDIO FROM OLIVE BAPTIST CHURCH: Take your Bible let’s go to the book of Acts.

Ted Traylor is pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. It’s the church library the Rugullies family gets to visit. Pastor Traylor says it hasn’t been easy keeping the church library doors open for families like theirs.

TED TRAYLOR: We had to make a decision. Everything going online and people reading on their phones and tablets and all of those things, but we saw it as an important investment.

An investment that has proven to have eternal dividends. Two years ago, Maureen Rugullies was compelled to write and send a letter to Pastor Traylor.

TRAYLOR READING LETTER: She says pastor this email is long overdue and spans twenty years. Six weeks after the birth of my second child, Demaris, I went to your church library….

RUGULLIES READING LETTER: Demaris, I went to your church library and introduced myself to Joan Hoyt…..

AUDIO: [RUGULLIES READING LETTER]

Rugullies goes on to write about how her four-year-old daughter Demaris in 2006 made a profession of faith in Christ while reading a book checked out from the church library.

RUGULLIES READS: And right then and there, she was adamant that we pray together to accept Christ as she wanted to be the daughter of the King of Kings. She is now 20, married and serving God and still loves to read Christ-honoring material. Thank you for your vision, and leadership and ministries. Love in Christ, Maureen Rugullies.

Reporting for WORLD. I’m Myrna Brown, with Naomi Balk, from Pensacola Florida and Portage, Michigan.

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