My Mom: A Missional Community Catalyst

My mom, Marilyn, is almost eighty years old.  Whether she knows it or not, she is starting a Missional Community. This is how they often start, with an idea, a helpful thought or suggestion.

My mom has enjoyed borrowing books from a shelf at the Country Inn Hotels. They let you borrow a book and then return it to one of their other locations. The Higher Ground coffee shop they frequent in Northern Minnesota does the same thing. If you have a book you want to leave for others, you add it to the collection. No one worries about whether it ever comes back.

The library I used as a kid at her church in St. Paul stopped functioning a while ago because it became too much work to track books, due dates and repeat offenders. However, people are missing the library and a couple bookshelves in a main area of the church sit empty.

My mom had the idea that to fill the gap this same type of book exchange she’s enjoying would be a great idea for her church. She went to her pastor to share her suggestion. Surprisingly, her pastor had already had a similar thought. The church was recently the site of a wedding and she thought the bookshelves with only a couple dormant books looked quite pitiful. With a weed through her books at home, she had already hauled a batch into the church.

My mom’s idea has resulted in enough happening that it took a twenty-minute phone explanation to describe. In just a few days, the effort has grown to include kids' books and cookbooks.  My dad's book of clean jokes has also been bequeathed to the cause.  Since the church often hosts activities for their neighborhood, people in the community will also have access to the collection. 

Labels are being made, people are excited about helping, systems of donations and screening are being established, baskets set up, announcements being written, and a "committee" forming.  I prefer to think of it as the emerging of a missional community; people working together around a common purpose or passion.  My mom is the catalyst. 

Someone had the idea that the book sharing could build community if each book had a bookmark.  If you read a book you sign your name on the bookmark. You might find the other people that borrowed the same book at a coffee hour or church service and talk to them about it. We wondered if people would sign the bookmarks in books written for crisis in your marriage, forgiveness of sins or weight loss. My daughter thought it would be fun to go through and sign all the bookmarks at one time, just so people would wonder.

You go Mom! I’m excited for the first kids that get to haul home books again.

What idea do you have that could start a missional community or a movement? Could you be a Catalyst?