This project is shared by the Life Team at Mount Olive Lutheran Church, Loveland, Colorado. Thank you to Joyce Flanscha, the Life Team Leader, for providing this information.
For those of us who love to read, books are a very special gift indeed. The Life Team at Mount Olive Lutheran Church has two separate projects where books are the cherished gift.
Children’s Bibles Given to the Local Pregnancy Resource Center
The first project is an ongoing one that provides copies of My Very Own Bible to their local Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC). This project had a very interesting beginning! When Lutherans For Life had a closeout sale on their GOD’S WORD for Life Bibles, they purchased about 100 of them. They distributed them as needed to area pregnancy centers and periodically checked in with them to see if they wanted more. It was during one of the follow up visits that their local center stated that they could use some Bible story books for children because those initiated questions from their clients and gave the center’s staff the opportunity to share the Gospel and answer questions. The Life Team researched many different children’s Bibles to find one that met their criteria on how creation, the flood, miracles, the passion story, and Jesus’ resurrection were handled. My Very Own Bible was their choice.
They purchase the Bibles from Christian Book Distributors. These are listed at a retail price of $6.99, but the Life Team has always purchased them on sale for considerably less. The Bibles are purchased with Life Team funds which are a line item in their congregation’s budget. They deliver the Bibles to the PRC personally and check in with them about once a year to see if they need more. The center staff are the ones who connect with the clients and distribute the Bibles as they minister to them.
Here are some additional things the Volunteer Relations Team came up with that you might consider if starting this project in your own congregation:
Ask your church leaders and the PRC if you could put your church’s contact information in the front of the Bible—either a printed or hand-written label. If clients know where this gift came from, they may want to thank your group. They may even show up at church in response to this loving gift. This can be a wonderful evangelistic tool to reach young families.
Since the PRC continues gifting these Bibles to families, they must see a positive impact. You might ask your center to share specific stories, using aliases if requested, of how your gift has opened the door to declaring the Gospel to a parent and how it has changed lives. This would certainly be an encouragement to your own congregation!
As many of us often do with backpacks, prayer shawls, and other items we send into our neighborhoods, consider blessing/consecrating the Bibles during a church service before they are given to the center.
Above all, pray that these Bibles will lead the counseling staff, the parents, and the children who receive them to come to know the Lord of Life who created them, redeemed them, and now calls them by name to be His own.
Abortion Survivors Break Their Silence, a Book by Melissa Ohden, Given to Neighborhood Sharing Libraries
The second project was a one-time event that may also bear much fruit, but only God knows the answer to that! Copies of the book Abortion Survivors Break Their Silence written by Melissa Ohden were purchased by the Life Team and placed in the little “book swapping boxes” found on poles in their own neighborhoods. The evangelism board paid for the books. They intentionally did not put the church’s name in the books as they did not want to deter someone from taking it home. Note: If concerned about rain damage, you might wrap the books in clear plastic before putting them in the box.
As with many of the great ideas and projects that we have done in the Lord’s name, we don’t always see the results. We don’t always know if a heart is touched or a life is changed. But our Lord knows. We are called to continue to plant the seed just as Jesus tells us to do in the Parable of the Seed Growing.
“And he said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’” (Mark 4:26-28).
We don’t have to fully understand how children’s Bibles change families. We don’t have to know how words of joy and encouragement from an abortion survivor may impact others. We just trust that because God promised it would be so, our labor and our prayers will produce abundant, full fruit—even when we know not how.