Looking Back: Bookshop In The Church

From September 1964

Bookshop In The Church

Example from Wellington

Wellington Church, Glasgow, has recently set up a bookstall in the church buildings. This congregation’s experience may be of interest to others.

The practical details of organisation, with help from volunteers and some expert advice, have proved quite simple.

With an initial sum of £25 provided by the Missionary Society (which was duly listed as a book agent), a stock of books was bought through one of the main Glasgow booksellers on a sale or return basis.

A display case was obtained from one of the large paperback publishers who are very ready to make such equipment available. We set up our goods and without any further preliminaries were in business.

Every Sunday, at morning and evening services, and during the weekday evenings in Wellington’s commodious crypt coffee-bar, the books have been out on sale, with one or two members on a large and not at all onerous rota in charge.

In rather less than six months some 800 books have been sold, new stock being bought with the proceeds of current sales. With the 10% discount allowed by the supplier, the bookstall has the prospect of a small profit which can, in commercial phrase, be ploughed back into the business. (It may be remarked that, contrary to some gloomy forecasts, not a single copy has gone astray in this time, and there are no losses to set against our gain.)

The object of the scheme is not, of course, to make money but to draw attention to the immense choice of good (and cheap) books available, and to stimulate thought and discussion.

It has been settled policy to provide as many different titles as possible, with constant additions to the stock as new books are published. So far the range has been restricted to paperbacks, but the number and variety of these is now so large that ‘restriction’ is hardly an appropriate word.

Month by month a series of ‘books of the month’, chosen by the minister, Mr Stuart McWilliam, has been recommended, and at the end of the month an evening has been arranged for discussion, Mr McWilliam and the assistant minister, Mr Nicol, presenting an initial exposition and commentary, followed by a ‘free-for-all’.

Among the books dealt with in this way have been Trevor Huddleston’s ‘Naught for Your Comfort’, Bonhoeffer’s ‘Letters from Prison’, ‘God’s Frozen People’ by Mark Gibbs and TR Morton, and the Bishop of Woolwich’s ‘Honest to God’.

As many as 150 copies of a particular choice have been sold (William Barclay, it may be noted, has been our best-seller so far), and a large proportion of those who have bought the book of the month have turned up for its discussion.

It is in this last activity that we have most felt the worth of the whole enterprise. Setting up shop has been instructive and fun; but in these studies, and the comparison and conflict of views – the argument going on occasionally outside the meeting-room and long into the evening – we have really learnt something about our faith and about one another.

-C.S

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