Posted in Books, Life in the Church
I'm sure you've all noticed by now that our Book Nook recently received a bit of a makeover. For some of us, this may have been an occasion to wonder why we have a bookstore in the first place. For one thing, it serves as a snapshot for us and our guests of where we stand in the timeline of church history. After per using the bookstore for 10 minutes, one should have a pretty good idea of what we believe and who we consider to be our theological comrades and ancestors. Even regular church members can benefit from this visible reminder of our place in a very long and very big salvation story. But most importantly, the bookstore exists to build up the church by equipping the saints with books to help us in our spiritual walk.
At SGC we are always looking for ways to make our various church ministries more effective in serving the body. In the Age of Amazon, when almost any book ever published can be at your doorstep in 24 hours, having books for sale is perhaps less of a benefit than it used to be. So it's with this in mind that we'll soon be adding a new service to the bookstore. Starting in the next couple of months, we'll have a library section where church members can rent books for a small fee (perhaps $1 per week). The goal is to offer books that will be helpful to you but which you may not be inclined to buy for yourself. The selection will start out small and hopefully grow over time. It will include commentaries and reference books as well as books on narrower topics that might come up too seldom to justify a place in your personal library. As with our bookstore generally, the goal is not to capture what all Christians have thought about everything or even to offer the "best" books that are available to Christians today. The goal is to provide books that reinforce what our church is doing, here in our time and place. A small-scale library may open up some new opportunities for us to do that more effectively.
If this idea excites you, there are a couple of ways that you can help. We don't have enough space to accommodate donations of old books from your attic. But any new initiative like this requires money to get started. Donations can be directed to the church library, and all of those funds will go toward the purchase of new books. The second way you can help is by volunteering to serve on Sunday mornings in the bookstore. We've got a couple of open spots for once-a-month bookstore workers. This is a great, easy way to meet new people while providing a helpful service on Sunday mornings. Please contact me if you have any interest in serving or if you have questions or suggestions regarding the bookstore and library.
- Brad Hodges
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