Essential Books For Any Church Library?

[thistle93]

Hello all! I will shortly be working on getting a church library put together at the church I pastor and thought would be good to get some recommendations. So what would be your TOP 10 books for any church library to have? And if feeling extra ambitious, why?

Blessings!

For His Glory-
Matthew

 

[LadyCalvinist]

You are a man after my own heart. Anything by the puritans and R.C. Sproul. Also, books by J.C. Ryle, John MacArthur, Jerry Bridges, and maybe David F. Wells. Also, books by C.S. Lewis.

 

[SolaScriptura]

The church I pastor has a library. According to the check-out log, the last time a book was borrowed was in September of 2017. The next to last time a check-out occurred was in August of 2016.

I don’t think a church library is a good use of resources or space.

 

[B.L.]

The church I pastor has a library. According to the check-out log, the last time a book was borrowed was in September of 2017. The next to last time a check-out occurred was in August of 2016.

I don’t think a church library is a good use of resources or space.

The checking out of books at my church is a little more common, but fairly infrequent as well. I wonder why this is? Perhaps the prevalence of electronic devices? Stale library selection of titles popular in the 80s/90s? Not sure.

One thing I enjoy doing is buying extra copies of good books that are short in length and easy to read and give them away to people that I meet with. I always wonder how many are actually read...lol.

 

[Bill The Baptist]

The checking out of books at my church is a little more common, but fairly infrequent as well. I wonder why this is?

1. Most people don’t read books, especially theological books.
2. Most books are available in electronic formats, which many people prefer.
3. Most of the information contained in popular level theological works is available in much more easily digested form on the author’s website and/or podcast.
4. A good portion of professing Christians have no interest in learning or growing (Hebrews 5:11).

 

[Jack K]

My church had a library, but no one used it so we scrapped it. We replaced it with a book table in the lobby that features "Pastor's Recommended Reading." Now people pay attention, snap photos on their phones so they can order what the pastor is reading, ask each other "Have you read that one?" etc. It's more effective than a library, much cheaper, and you don't have the problem of what to say to members who want to donate the entire Left Behind series to the church library.

That said... if you go ahead with a library or book table of some sort, I hope you consider including resources for family worship/devotions. Many families do nothing along those lines, but will start if they are told it's important and given good resources that are easy to use. So, featuring such resources can be of great benefit to your church. Include some that are super-easy for an untrained first-timer to use (like those by Marty Machowski) and also some that go deeper (like catechism guides or books from Starr Meade).

 

[Edward]

The church I pastor has a library. According to the check-out log, the last time a book was borrowed was in September of 2017.

Our library gets much heavier usage, but that may reflect a lower level of discernment in the book selection. We are currently liquidating much of the inventory in anticipation of a relocation to higher visibility but smaller space (and a split of the children's and adult collections and a relocation of the bookstore). So my response may be different a year or two from now.

So what would be your TOP 10 books for any church library to have?

What is the target audience and their level of sophistication? I wouldn't recommend a dense, complex work to an audience that needs some Packer or Sproul.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

I agree with others that a library may not be worth the effort and time. That said, if you do go forward with it, you might consider making it more of a reference library consisting mostly of larger sets of commentaries and works that many could or would not purchase themselves.

 

[lynnie]

My husband and I have been librarians in three churches of our 40 year marriage.

We read all the time. Very few people do.

The pastor at the last library got VERY frustrated because he put many of his good books in the section marked only for reference in the library, please do not remove or take home sort of thing. (It was open all week near the church office plus some evenings, and had comfortable chairs and good lights so people could use a book there). Expensive reference books disappeared anyway, or one book out of a set of commentaries. It is so weird to me how Christians can do that for the sake of bible study......maybe they feel they are entitled or something. If you put in commentary sets make sure you can deal emotionally with books disappearing forever.

We got good mileage out of CDs. John Piper was popular and we pushed his biographies, which are wonderful, for listening in the car. For many folks it was their first real introduction to church history and they loved them. We also saw interest in Tim Keller sets and other Piper sets like Romans and Hebrews, and hub put in a lot of heavier duty material like WTS CDs, but they were not popular. I can't say that even the CDs got a lot of usage, but it was way more than the books.

I drove over to CCEF and got a set of all their little booklets on various counseling subjects, and they got some usage along with counseling materials in general on marriage and family. We got some great DVD sets by RC Sproul to watch....far as I know wasted the money, hate to say.

Our current pastor does a book every month in the bulletin. Might be something basic by RC Sproul, or maybe a CCEF book, occasionally a kids book. I don't know if people read them but you could try.

I will add that we used to loan out books from our own collection. At one point I sent out 22 letters, snail mail, saying that you had borrowed the following book xxxxx, and if you were done could you please return it, and if you lost it or gave it away that was OK but could you please let us know the status of the book. Guess how many of our zealous Christian brethren responded. Two. Exactly two. One guy told my husband that he was mistaken and it wasn't our book but his book ( it was ours) which by the grace of God was so ludicrous if you knew the situation when he borrowed it, that we joked about it together for years.

All I can say is, its your money or the church money and don't part with anything you can't afford to lose, and don't have high expectations. And by the way a sign out notebook with columns for title and name of borrower and date is simpler than going through the library card routine.

I will pray for you tonight. I applaud your hearts desire. May the Lord grant you some hungry sheep.

 

[ZackF]

Expensive reference books disappeared anyway, or one book out of a set of commentaries. It is so weird to me how Christians can do that for the sake of bible study......

Interesting you say this Lynnie. A Roman Catholic friend of mine, who was a monk for several years, said the books most often ripped off from libraries were philosophical and theological works. I don't know if that's documented anywhere though.

 

[ZackF]

Hello all! I will shortly be working on getting a church library put together at the church I pastor and thought would be good to get some recommendations. So what would be your TOP 10 books for any church library to have? And if feeling extra ambitious, why?

Blessings!

For His Glory-
Matthew

My advice is to start out small. Maintain a shelf in the narthex and get feedback over the coming weeks and months. Expand if it is a hit.

A couple of ladies at our church are revamped the library but it is upstairs (our oldsters can't get up there) at the back of the building. I hate to see them go through all of this effort and no more books are getting read. I'm going to talk to them about that and bring it up at the next deacons meeting. Maybe we can bring it downstairs. We have small selection on a table that gets some traffic.

 

[bookslover]

I agree with much that has been said here. My church has a rather large library, with a lot of good stuff in it, that is almost totally ignored.

Most Christians are just not readers today. The cynic in me thinks you're lucky if you can get most Christians to read their Bibles, much less other books.

Read the thread "Theological Help for My Wife" (currently on the home page). Many, many people are in the same boat. Even a simple book like J. I. Packer's "Knowing God" is not simple enough for some folks. Some Christians are not ready for the Westminster Confession of Faith. You'd have to start them out with a very, very basic children's catechism, and work up from there.

My advice to you would be to skip it. It's not worth the effort. Use the space for something else.

D. A. Carson's "mythical well-read layman" remark is no joke.

 

[Tom Hart]

Bibles
Calvin's Commentaries
Calvin's Institutes
Some books for the kids (Like this one)

 

[RamistThomist]

The Age of Books is Over.
The Age of Podcasts (and Vlogs) has Come.

The only danger with podcasts, though, is one can get more excited about parachurch ministries than the actual church.

 

[Brian R.]

Like a lot of folks have said here, most Christians just simply do not read much anymore. And then there are people like me who do read a lot, but I prefer to own my books. Thus, a church library wouldn't even be that appealing to me. Sadly, we live in a different age.

 

[C. M. Sheffield]

The Age of Books is Over.

 

[Jack K]

The Age of Books is Over.
The Age of Podcasts (and Vlogs) has Come

Christian book sales have never been stronger than they are today. But people are reading shorter books and reading them less thoroughly, only finishing a Christian book they start about 10 percent of the time.

You are right that podcasts and vlogs (and blogs, too) are on the rise. They are still often tied to books. In many cases, book authors make the most credible vloggers and podcast guests. But these short-form outlets may end up getting an author's message out more effectively than the book itself does. Rather than invest the time to read a whole book, people choose to learn in smaller chunks or in a format (audio) that allows them to multi-task.

Personally, I think the last Christian book I read cover-to-cover out of personal interest (not because I was editing it or needed to research it) was Sinclair Ferguson's The Whole Christ in 2016. That's three years ago. I've acquired a lot of other great books since then, but have read them in pieces. Rebecca McLaughlin's Confronting Christianity comes to mind. It's excellent and I've read most of it, but not in order and only a chapter at a time now and then. That works because the book is more like a collection of related essays ("posts" on paper) than one long book. This seems to be a trend in Christian publishing.

So to get to Matthew's question... it might be good to include some short-form material. For example, the CCEF mini-books are popular and seem to help many people, and even those who don't do much reading find them manageable and are willing to dive in.

 

[RamistThomist]

Well played. I am all for church libraries but I am also realistic that they rarely get used.

 

[RJ Spencer]

The church library at Parkside (Alistair Begg) is more of a book store, but they allow people to sit there, both in the library and in the sitting area to read. As long as you don't leave the church with the books you are free to lounge around as long as you'd like. I told one of the women working there that I could spend all day there and then some.

 

[JH]

The Christian's Reasonable Service Systematic - Wilhelmus a Brakel
Mortification of Sin - John Owen
The Christian in Complete Armour - William Gurnall
Matthew Henry, Unabridged Commentary
John Calvin, Unabridged Commentary
Valley of Vision
Reformed Dogmatics Systematic - Herman Bavinck
Building a godly Home, 3 volume set - William Gouge
2,000 Years of Christ's Power, 4 volume set - Nick Needham
Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries, RHB 4 volume set - James T. Dennison

 

[Tom Hart]

Matthew Henry, Unabridged Commentary

I second this. If you can only have one commentary, it should be Henry's.

 

[bookslover]

"Reading has become a species of eccentricity and, in some quarters, reading the books of the past is judged aberrant behavior." - Patrick Kurp

The quote is from his blog, "Anecdotal Evidence" (www.evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com) for 11/15/19.

His is an excellent blog about books and reading, by the way.

And, yes, I wish I'd written that!

 

[RamistThomist]

If your church building is like every other church building in the world, your library is probably located in a cleaned out janitor's closet. Even if people in your church like to read (a minority in American culture), they aren't going to make a detour after church to get a book (especially if they are juggling kids).

Therefore, pick about 10 books relevant to the sermon series and place them in the lobby or foyer. That's how they will get accessed.

 

[TheInquirer]

I would also recommend putting out a recommending reading list and let people pick up books on their own and include a range of reading levels from beginner to advanced.

 

[ZackF]

If your church building is like every other church building in the world, your library is probably located in a cleaned out janitor's closet. Even if people in your church like to read (a minority in American culture), they aren't going to make a detour after church to get a book (especially if they are juggling kids).

Therefore, pick about 10 books relevant to the sermon series and place them in the lobby or foyer. That's how they will get accessed.

You nailed it! Just rotate them now and again.

 

[Puritan Sailor]

We have a church library that is used only by a few. I've pruned a lot of the less helpful books and we are adding better books for all reading levels. We've especially focused on audio books. We also have a special shelf in the foyer with the "new books" or books following a specific theme. I've also started plugging a few books at the beginning of Sunday School, just to remind people what we have. But so far, I haven't noticed much of an increase yet. We just do not have a lot of readers. Hopefully the efforts to promote reading will produce more fruit soon.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

If your church building is like every other church building in the world, your library is probably located in a cleaned out janitor's closet. Even if people in your church like to read (a minority in American culture), they aren't going to make a detour after church to get a book (especially if they are juggling kids).

Therefore, pick about 10 books relevant to the sermon series and place them in the lobby or foyer. That's how they will get accessed.

That is what the guy who runs the book table at my church currently does. There is a book table with various general books and books relevant to the biblical books/themes being preached on in the morning and evening. I think people are free to take the books if they want them and to drop a donation in an "honesty box" or something to that effect.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

Unpopular opinion: using the money that might be spent on a church library might be better spent simply buying the books and giving them away free of charge to those who may be interested in reading them.