I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve come to the conclusion that yes, churches should have bookstalls and it saddens me that this is becoming less prominent in churches.
This is to be a short post so, should your church have a bookstall? Yes, and here are my reasons:
Theology Matters
Theology Matters. As a Christian Church we are to “truth in love” according to Paul in Ephesians 3:15. As Christian brothers and sisters, we are to speak the truth in love to each other as often as we are able. Why? Well that is verse 14. So we are not blown all over the shop by every wind of doctrine. Here’s the point. How do we speak the truth in love to one another in a way that guards against false doctrine. We speak true doctrine. Putting down deep roots in true doctrine, in good theology, that is what guards us against error. Both for ourselves, but probably more powerfully, as we speak this truth to one another.
So, we must take every opportunity to help one another put down deep roots in healthy doctrine and theology. We can do this by reading the Bible together, by reading books together, by speaking gospel truth in our everyday conversation and applying this to our every day lives.
We grow in this together as we speak to one another. And as we work to deepen our understanding of the Word of God so we can better build one another up.
The message of our world around us whispers to us constantly and without healthy doctrine we are sitting ducks. Without a Christian mind, a mind shaped by Christ and the truth of his gospel, without the ability to clearly see and refute the errors therein, we will be like “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
Reading Theology matters
Far and away, the primary way our theology is to be developed is within the local church as we hear the Word of God preached and as we read it together. But, alongside this, maximising our exposure to good theology is a very wise thing to do. This is where reading good Christian books comes in.
Having a bookstall in your church sends a message to the congregation that reading books is a good thing to do. My observation is that Christians are not reading as much as once we did. My concern with this is that we are still imbibing ‘truth and ideas’ about the world we live in, who we are and how to live, from the world around us every minute we are awake. If reading good books helps us to guard ourselves against this and maintain sound theology, then having a bookstall and talking about the books on it, maybe having reading groups in the church, will all communicate the value and importance of reading Christian books.
Because I believe in the primary role the local church has in rooting us in theology, for reading good books to be something that is unavailable in our local church and that we need to outside of the local church seems odd to me.
Reading GOOD Theology matters.
There are a lot of Christian books out there. A lot of books that are fantastic. There are a lot of books that are not. There are a lot of books that are actually far from it. Many will actually contribute to you being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
The question becomes, how do you know what is good. For most of us, as we start out on our reading journey, all we can do is trust people’s recommendations.
Increasingly, I observe, these recommendations are coming direct from booksellers and not from churches.
In one sense I don’t have a problem with this as I know a lot of Christian booksellers and I would trust their advice. But, great care needs to be taken here.
I know the pastors in my local church family. I trust them. I trust their theology, I trust their pastoral oversight and leadership.
Having a bookstall our church enables us to communicate to the church what are good and helpful books to read and can guard against Christians being led to unhelpful books in a vacuum of wisdom and advice on what to read.
So those would be my reasons for having a bookstall in your church:
- THEOLOGY matters
- READING theology matters
- reading GOOD theology matters.
And guess what, having a bookstall in your church can convey all of the messages about these three things, even if no one ever buys a book from the church bookstall but gets it online.
