Most Christians I know own a lot of Christian books.
Perhaps that says something about the Christians I know, or perhaps it says something about Christians in general. I’m guessing the latter!
There’s a lot of bad Christian books out there that aren’t worth reading - I’ve written about how to avoid that.
But there’s also a lot of double-ups in the libraries of Christians. I wonder which books would make the most appearances on the bookshelves of Christians - would you like to take a guess?
To be sure, some books you want to own, write on and savour. Some you need to return to time and time again.
Yet many books don’t fit into those categories, and a lot of money could be saved (and put to other purposes) if these books were shared, rather than bought by every second person in your church.
This is why SharedBookshelves is such a good idea. It facilitates book sharing at your church - and it’s free.
Here’s how it works:
- Sign-up for a free account.
- Add the details of the books that you own that you’re willing to lend people.
- Browse a list of books owned by people at your church.
- Borrow books from others, or lend books that you own to people who request them.
Within the site you can also create a list of books you’d like to read, and write reviews for books you’ve read. There’s also a space to make a note of who borrowed the book - to avoid seeing your books disappear down the notorious ‘borrowed book black-hole’!
You can see how this works at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate:
It’s a brilliant idea to not only save money, but help those who don’t have much of it to get hold of some quality Christian books. I’m going to chat to the staff about getting this happening at Church by the Bridge.
