In Birmingham, 25 out of 35 public libraries are threatened with closure. I was thinking about this recently whilst reading this article by Steve Kneale on what Christians can learn from the death of the High Street. Steve mentions the challenge that libraries face too. I think there are some even more specific lessons to learn from that.
The big public outcry when libraries are threatened with closure is that this will mean a loss of vital community space. Libraries often offer a range of services and events from ESOL classes through to Play and Stay including concerts fun days and arts and craft along the way. However, the thing is that when they offer those things, they do so in competition with other venues, organisations, businesses, and charities.
Yet, the primary purpose of libraries is not really to provide space for community activities. Their original purpose was to enable people to borrow books in order to encourage literacy. To some extent it seems to me that the diversification of what libraries offer reflects a decline in reading generally. Even when people do read, they don’t need to go to the library because they can often get the books quicker and reasonably cheaply to download onto their kindles.
So, libraries have had to justify their existence to the city hall bean-counters. How do they do that? It’s by counting footfall. “Look at all the people coming into our library.” I suspect also that librarians who do love books and care about reading hope that if they can draw people in for concerts and quizzes then they will hopefully get them to go away with a bag full of books. It would be interesting to know how often this happens. I suspect that it isn’t very often. I also suspect that even those events only serve a very tiny fraction of most communities.
I think you can tell where I’m going with this. Prior to the Global Pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it, I believe that the Church had fallen for the same line of reasoning. We spen a lot of time putting on events and activities, hoping that this would get people into our buildings and that from there we might even see some begin reading our book and engaging with the Gospel. I think that we were also tempted at times to see ourselves as providing a service to our communities.
In reality I would argue that even if we had a lot of people coming into our buildings that the vast majority of people in our communities were not connected to us in any meaningful way. Furthermore, it was very rare indeed that our activities led to further Gospel engagmenet.
Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do all of those things, especially if you enjoy them. However, I think it is important that we don’t develop false expectations about what we are achieving. And just as libraries need to remember that their primary purpose, their USP is to enable people to read, then we need to remember that our primary purpose is the Gospel. If people are coming to our buildings and events without meeting Jesus through his word then what is the point of them being there?
Faithroots 