OKEECHOBEE — During nearly 30 years as a church librarian, Lois Cone has seen marriages saved, children educated and college theses completed through the Christian resources she has been able to provide.

“There was an individual I knew by sight only,” Cone said. “I saw her one day at a church bazaar and asked her how she was, small talk. She said, “My husband’s left me…he’s with somebody else.’ ”

Cone immediately went into her church’s library and found an audio copy of “Love Must Be Tough” by Dr. James Dobson for the woman. A few days later, the same woman called her to say how good the Dobson material was and ask if she had anything for her son.

“That couple is still together today and raising their second son,” Cone said. “This kind of thing makes it really worth it, and it was just library media.”

Cone is a member of First United Methodist Church here and caretaker of the church’s 5,000-book library, which also contains more than 500 videos and 400 audio tapes. The collection comprises material for all age groups, including Christian fiction, reference books, self-help material and sermon tapes.

“It’s amazing what’s available anymore,” Cone said, adding she is impressed at the different genres available under the heading of Christian fiction, including Westerns and Christian romance. “Steeple Hill is a branch of Harlequin that publishes Christian romance…where the characters live their faith and the women aren’t clinging vines.”

Cone says church libraries are important for their potential in ministry and because they offer people in the church and community an alternative to popular media. “There’s so much beautiful stuff out there, and our people don’t know it,” she said.

Cone began her first church library when “the Methodist hierarchy decided all churches should have a library,” she said. She collected the few books the church’s youth group had and a few reference books a Sunday school class had bought. She was given half a room.

Soon, she was using picture books of Bible stories to help some of the children learn to read better and had recruited several youth to work with her in the library.

“Some of them tithed their allowances to purchase resources for the library,” Cone said. She also lobbied church groups to purchase books and encouraged members to donate used books. Pastors from her church and other churches in the community also donated books from their personal libraries. “It sort of snowballed,” she said.

Cone has provided books to parents home schooling their children and college students writing papers on comparative religion. She recently sent a complete set of Tim Lahaye’s “Left Behind” books to a local woman’s pen pal in Russia and asked the congregation to donate the postage.

Cone says it’s important to share information about Christian media. She has been writing reviews of Christian books for UMR Communications, publisher of the various conference editions of the “United Methodist Review,” for nearly seven years. Her reviews are available on-line at http://www.umr.org. 

“I do it so our people know that these things are available, so God’s people know there are ways to learn more about Him,” she said.