In This Guide
- Faith Communities and Books
- Church Library Weeding
- VBS Leftover Materials
- Sunday School and Faith Formation Curriculum
- Religious Books with Collector Value
- Congregation Downsizing
- Faith-Based Homeschool Materials
- Albuquerque’s Faith Landscape
- How to Organize a Congregation Book Collection
- What Happens to Donated Religious Books
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Related Pages
The Untapped Donation Pipeline
Last verified May 2026 · Original research by Josh Eldred
Faith Communities and Books
I am Josh Eldred, and I run the New Mexico Literacy Project out of my warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE in Albuquerque. I have been picking up book donations across the state for years, and one pattern has become increasingly clear to me: faith communities are sitting on enormous quantities of books that they do not know what to do with, and most of them have never been told that a free, respectful option exists for handling all of it.
Churches accumulate books in ways that no other institution does. There is the church library, which in many congregations has been quietly growing since the 1960s or 1970s without a systematic weeding process. There are the Sunday school rooms, where decades of quarterly curriculum guides and student workbooks stack up in closets that nobody wants to open. There is the fellowship hall storage closet with twelve years of Vacation Bible School kits, each one used for a single week and then boxed up because throwing away materials with Scripture on them feels wrong. There is the pastor's study, where the retiring minister has left behind thirty years of commentaries, sermon illustration books, and theological journals. There is the donated estate of a deceased parishioner, whose family brought the entire personal library to the church rather than dealing with it themselves.
Synagogues have their own version of this accumulation. The temple library with decades of Jewish scholarship, the Hebrew school materials from curricula that have been replaced multiple times, the Haggadot from twenty Passovers, the memorial book donations that families made in honor of loved ones. Mosques collect Qurans, tafsir commentaries, hadith collections, and Islamic educational materials that grow steadily as the community grows. Buddhist centers accumulate dharma books and meditation guides. Every faith tradition that values learning generates a physical library, and every physical library eventually reaches the point where something has to give.
Albuquerque is home to hundreds of congregations. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe alone covers dozens of Catholic parishes in the metro area. There are Baptist churches on seemingly every major road. Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Seventh-day Adventist, Assembly of God, nondenominational megachurches, and small independent congregations meeting in strip-mall spaces. There are two established synagogues and multiple Jewish community organizations. There is the Islamic Center of New Mexico, one of the oldest purpose-built mosques in the state. There are Buddhist meditation centers, a Baha'i community, Unitarian Universalist congregations, LDS wards and stakes, and Quaker meeting houses. Every one of these faith communities has books, and most of them have far more books than they know how to handle.
This page is written for the church secretary, the synagogue librarian, the mosque education committee chair, the temple volunteer, and the denominational office administrator who has been staring at that storage room and wondering what to do about it. The answer is simple: call me at 702-496-4214. Free pickup, no sorting required, every book individually assessed, every faith tradition treated with respect. If you want to understand the full picture before you call, the next nine sections explain exactly how this works for congregations.
The Decades-Overdue Refresh
Church Library Weeding
Public libraries weed their collections on a regular schedule. Every few years, librarians walk the stacks with a critical eye and pull titles that have not circulated, editions that have been superseded, and books whose physical condition has deteriorated past the point of usefulness. It is a professional discipline, and public librarians are trained in it. Church libraries, by contrast, are almost never weeded. The church library is typically managed by a volunteer — often a dedicated and well-meaning one — who views the collection as something to be grown, never reduced. Books come in through donations, memorial gifts, and pastoral recommendations. They almost never go out.
The result, after two or three decades, is a collection that has quietly become a storage problem. The shelves are full. The bottom shelves are double-stacked. There are boxes behind the shelves, on top of the shelves, and in the closet next to the library room. The circulation has slowed to a trickle because the browsing experience has become overwhelming and the materials are dated. A church library that was vibrant and well-used in 1990 can become a warehouse by 2026 if nobody ever removes a single book.
I have walked into church libraries in Albuquerque where the newest book on the shelf was published in 2003. I have seen lending libraries where the fiction section was entirely Frank Peretti, Janette Oke, and early Left Behind series paperbacks — books that were popular in their moment but have not attracted a borrower in fifteen years. I have seen children's sections stocked with Arch Books from the 1970s and flannel-graph Bible story sets that predate the current Sunday school coordinator by two generations. I have seen reference shelves lined with Matthew Henry commentaries from the 1960s, Strong's concordances with cracked spines, and multiple copies of Halley's Bible Handbook in various states of disrepair.
None of this is a criticism of the volunteers who built these collections. They were doing good work at the time. But a church library that has not been weeded in thirty years needs a refresh, and a refresh means hundreds or thousands of books need to go somewhere. The volunteer who finally takes on the weeding project deserves a partner who will handle the removed books responsibly, and that is what NMLP provides. I bring the truck, I do the loading, and I take everything — the good, the dated, the worn, and the forgotten. The church library gets a fresh start. The volunteer does not have to make twenty trips to Goodwill or face the guilt of putting books with Scripture in a dumpster.
If your congregation is considering a library refresh, call me before you start pulling books. I can walk the stacks with you, identify anything with collector value that might surprise you, and set up the pickup for whenever the weeding is complete. The assessment is free. The pickup is free. The only thing it costs is a phone call: 702-496-4214.
Every Summer, Every Church
VBS Leftover Materials
Vacation Bible School is one of the largest annual programming events for most Protestant churches in Albuquerque, and it generates an astonishing volume of physical materials. A typical VBS curriculum kit from a major publisher — Lifeway, Group Publishing, Standard Publishing, Cokesbury — includes leader guides, student activity books, story books, music CDs, DVD teaching segments, decorating posters, craft supplies, snack recipe cards, outdoor game instructions, and promotional materials. Multiply that kit by the number of age groups your church runs, add in the supplemental materials that the VBS director ordered because the main kit did not include enough for your attendance, and you are looking at several boxes of material by the time the week is over.
The problem is that VBS curricula are designed to be used once. Each year brings a new theme — Galactic Starveyors, Shipwrecked, Rocky Railway, Concrete and Cranes, Spark Studios, Stellar, Breaker Rock Beach. The themes are branded, the decorations are theme-specific, and churches almost never reuse the same curriculum because the children who attended last year will be back this year expecting something new. So the materials from this summer's VBS go into a closet, and the materials from last summer's VBS are still in that closet, and the materials from three summers ago are in a box somewhere in the basement storage area that nobody has opened since the pastor before the current pastor was in charge of children's ministry.
I have picked up VBS materials from churches in Albuquerque where the accumulation goes back ten or twelve years. That is ten or twelve complete curriculum sets, each with its own leader guides, student books, music media, and decorating materials. Nobody wants to throw them away because they were expensive and because discarding materials that reference Scripture feels disrespectful. But nobody is going to use a 2014 VBS curriculum kit again. It sits in the closet, taking up space that the current children's ministry director needs for current programming materials.
NMLP takes all of it. Current and outdated. Complete kits and partial kits. Leader guides and student workbooks and music CDs and craft supply leftovers. I sort through everything individually. Usable curriculum — particularly complete kits from recent years — gets routed to smaller congregations and mission churches that cannot afford to purchase new VBS materials at retail. The same free pickup applies to leftovers from library book sales, which many churches also host. A small congregation in Belen or Estancia or Espanola with a children's ministry budget that does not stretch to a full Lifeway kit can put last year's materials to excellent use. Older materials that are past their practical life go to recycling. Nothing is landfilled, and nothing sits in your closet for another decade.
The best time to call is right after VBS ends, when the cleanup is fresh and the volunteers still remember where everything is stored. But I also hear from churches that are doing a general storage cleanout in January or October and discovering years of accumulated VBS materials they had forgotten about. Either way, call 702-496-4214 and I will schedule a pickup.
The Quarterly Accumulation
Sunday School and Faith Formation Curriculum
Sunday school curriculum operates on a quarterly cycle for most denominations, which means that four times a year, a new set of teacher guides and student workbooks arrives and the previous quarter's materials become surplus. Over the course of a decade, that quarterly cycle produces a remarkable volume of physical material. A mid-size church with classes for preschool, early elementary, upper elementary, middle school, high school, and two or three adult classes is receiving roughly forty to sixty individual curriculum pieces per quarter. Multiply that by forty quarters in a decade, and you are looking at somewhere between sixteen hundred and twenty-four hundred individual booklets, guides, and workbooks — from a single congregation.
Denominations switch publishers more often than congregations realize. A Baptist church might move from Lifeway's Bible Studies for Life series to The Gospel Project, and the transition leaves behind a complete run of the old curriculum that nobody needs anymore. A Methodist church might shift from Cokesbury's standard offering to an independent publisher like The Foundry or re:form, and the old Cokesbury quarterlies pile up. Presbyterian churches cycling through curricula from the PC(USA) publishing house, Lutheran churches with Augsburg Fortress materials, Churches of Christ with 21st Century Christian resources — every denomination has its own publishers and its own cycle of obsolescence.
The Catholic side of this is its own category. RCIA materials for adult catechesis, first communion preparation guides, confirmation curriculum, children's Liturgy of the Word resources, Lenten study booklets, Advent devotional guides — the Archdiocese of Santa Fe covers dozens of parishes in the Albuquerque metro, and each one generates its own stream of religious education materials. When a parish transitions from one DRE to another, the incoming director almost always discovers a closet full of curriculum that the previous director accumulated and never discarded.
Jewish education materials follow a similar pattern. Hebrew school workbooks, Torah study guides, materials for b'nai mitzvah preparation, High Holy Days educational resources, and Passover study guides accumulate in temple closets and education offices. Congregation Albert and Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque both maintain active education programs that cycle through materials over time.
NMLP handles all of it regardless of denomination, publisher, or era. I do not require sorting by publisher or date. I do not require that materials be in perfect condition. Used student workbooks with writing in them, teacher guides with highlighting and margin notes, outdated quarterlies from publishers that no longer exist — bring it all. I assess everything individually, route usable materials to organizations that can use them, and recycle what has passed its practical life. If your education wing is overflowing, the number is 702-496-4214.
The Surprise Section
Religious Books with Collector Value
This is the section that surprises people. Church libraries and faith community collections frequently contain books with genuine collector value that the congregation does not recognize. The volunteer running the library sees old books on the shelf and assumes they are worthless because they are old. In the rare book world, old is often exactly where the value lives. I have walked church library shelves in Albuquerque and identified books worth more than the church's annual library budget, sitting unrecognized between dog-eared paperback devotionals.
Bibles are the most common category of underrecognized value in church collections. Modern study Bibles and pew Bibles have no collector value — they were mass-produced and millions of copies exist. But pre-1850 Bibles, particularly American printings, carry significant historical interest. Family Bibles from the nineteenth century with handwritten genealogical records — births, marriages, deaths recorded in period ink on the endpapers — are genuinely valuable both as historical documents and as genealogical resources. I have seen family Bibles in church libraries that were donated decades ago by families whose names are still on the membership rolls, Bibles containing genealogical data that exists nowhere else. Those deserve careful handling, not a trip to the dumpster. If your church has a first-edition identification question, that guide explains the basics of what to look for.
Beyond Bibles, the collector market for religious books is broader and deeper than most people realize. C.S. Lewis first editions are seriously collected — a first UK printing of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, or any of the Narnia novels in good condition with dust jacket commands substantial attention from collectors. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's works, particularly early English translations of The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison, attract scholarly and collector interest. Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain in a first edition is a significant find. Henri Nouwen, Frederick Buechner, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy — authors whose work sits at the intersection of literature and theology tend to be actively collected, and their books tend to end up in church libraries because that is where their audience gathers.
Vintage hymnals carry their own collector niche. Shape-note singing books from the Sacred Harp tradition have a devoted following among music historians and active singing communities. Early editions of denominational hymnals — the first printing of a hymnal that went through twenty subsequent editions — interest musicologists and seminary libraries. Camp meeting songbooks from the nineteenth century, particularly from the Second Great Awakening period, have historical value that transcends their musical content. I have found hymnals in Albuquerque church closets that were published before New Mexico was a state.
Catholic liturgical books in Latin — pre-Vatican II missals, breviaries, and sacramentaries — are collected by traditional Catholic communities, liturgical scholars, and book collectors who appreciate the typography and binding quality of mid-twentieth-century liturgical printing. A hand-missal from the 1940s or 1950s in good condition with its original leather binding is a sought-after item. Older liturgical texts — seventeenth or eighteenth century — enter the realm of genuinely rare books.
Jewish texts present their own collector categories. Complete Talmud sets, particularly the Vilna edition or the Soncino English translation, hold steady value. Illuminated Haggadot — Passover texts with artistic illustrations — range from modestly collectible modern editions to genuinely rare historical printings. Early American Judaica, meaning Jewish religious texts printed in the United States before 1850, is an active collecting field. A library valuation walkthrough can help identify whether your collection contains any of these pieces.
Islamic calligraphy — hand-lettered Quran pages, Ottoman-era manuscripts, Persian miniature paintings from religious texts — represents yet another collecting category, though these are less common in Albuquerque congregations. When they do appear, they tend to be donated by families with connections to the Middle East, North Africa, or South Asia, and they deserve expert assessment rather than bulk processing.
The point is this: before your congregation discards, donates, or bulk-processes its accumulated religious books, let me walk the collection. The assessment is free, takes about an hour for a typical church library, and the findings are often surprising. Call 702-496-4214 to schedule.
When the Building Changes Hands
Congregation Downsizing
Congregations close. They merge with other churches. They sell their buildings and move to smaller spaces. They transition from a dedicated facility to shared space or home-based gatherings. This is a reality of American religious life in the 2020s, and Albuquerque is not exempt from the trend. When a congregation that has occupied the same building for forty, sixty, or a hundred years makes the decision to close or consolidate, the physical contents of that building need to go somewhere. The pews, the kitchen equipment, the filing cabinets, the Sunday school furniture — those are straightforward logistics. The books are a different matter entirely.
A congregation that has been in continuous operation since the 1920s or 1930s has accumulated a library that may contain genuinely historically significant material. I am not talking about monetary value, though that may be present too. I am talking about institutional history — the handwritten minutes of the women's auxiliary from 1947, the mimeographed church bulletins from the 1960s, the photo albums from every church picnic since 1958, the bound volumes of denominational magazines that the church librarian preserved because she believed they mattered. And she was right. They do matter. They are primary sources for the religious and social history of Albuquerque, and they deserve better than a dumpster.
When a closing or merging congregation calls me, I approach the job differently than a standard book pickup. I walk the building with someone who knows the church's history — usually a long-time member or a board officer — and I go room by room. The church library gets the standard collector assessment. But I also look at the materials that are not technically books: the bound records, the photo archives, the correspondence files, the financial ledgers that tell the story of a congregation's life. When historically significant materials are identified, I can connect the congregation with appropriate archives — the Center for Southwest Research at UNM, the Archdiocese of Santa Fe archives for Catholic parishes, denominational archives for Protestant churches, or the New Mexico State Records Center for materials with broader historical significance.
The practical reality is that a congregation in the process of closing is dealing with grief, logistics, legal requirements, and time pressure simultaneously. The people handling the closure are usually volunteers who are already emotionally stretched. They do not have the bandwidth to individually sort and assess the library. That is exactly why NMLP exists as a resource for this situation. One phone call, one pickup, and the books are handled with the care they deserve. I have done this for churches in Albuquerque and across New Mexico, and I treat every closing congregation's materials with the respect that the community built around those materials deserves.
If your congregation is in the process of closing, merging, or moving to a smaller space, do not wait until the building deadline to think about the books. Call early so I can walk the building before things get packed into unlabeled boxes or hauled to the curb. The number is 702-496-4214.
The Co-Op Curriculum Cycle
Faith-Based Homeschool Materials
Albuquerque has a large and active faith-based homeschool community, and that community generates a steady stream of curriculum materials that need somewhere to go. Homeschool families tend to be intentional about their educational resources, and many of them use faith-integrated curricula — Abeka, Bob Jones University Press, Sonlight, My Father's World, Apologia science, Saxon math, Rod and Staff, Christian Liberty Press, and dozens of smaller publishers. When a family finishes a grade level, the materials for that level become surplus. When a family finishes homeschooling altogether — their youngest graduates, or they transition back to conventional schooling — the entire multi-year curriculum library becomes surplus all at once.
Homeschool co-ops in Albuquerque often organize curriculum swaps, and these events generate their own leftover materials. The swap is effective for current and popular curricula, but older editions, consumable workbooks that have been partially used, and niche materials tend to be left on the table at the end of the swap. The co-op coordinator is then stuck with boxes of unclaimed curriculum and no plan for them. Several Albuquerque co-ops have started calling me after their swaps to handle the remainders, and that arrangement has become a regular part of the cycle.
Church-based homeschool groups that meet in church facilities for enrichment classes, co-op days, or resource sharing generate their own accumulation. The church hosts the group, the group accumulates materials in the church's storage spaces, and eventually the church administrator notices that three closets are full of homeschool curriculum that nobody has touched in two years. These materials often end up mixed in with the church's own Sunday school resources, creating a combined storage problem that benefits from a single comprehensive pickup.
Some faith-based homeschool curricula have genuine resale value, particularly complete multi-grade sets from premium publishers in current editions. Abeka and Sonlight sets retain value well on the secondary market. Apologia science textbooks are consistently in demand. I assess these individually and route them appropriately. Older editions, partially used workbooks, and supplemental materials that have limited resale value still have practical value for families who are homeschooling on tight budgets and are happy to work with an older edition. NMLP routes usable curriculum to those families and communities rather than sending it to the landfill.
If you are a homeschool family cleaning out years of accumulated curriculum, a co-op coordinator dealing with swap leftovers, or a church administrator whose building has become a homeschool material storage facility, the pickup is free and the assessment is individual. Call or text 702-496-4214.
A City of Congregations
Albuquerque’s Faith Landscape
To understand the scale of the book-donation opportunity that faith communities represent, it helps to understand the scale of Albuquerque's religious landscape. This is not a city with a handful of churches. This is a city with hundreds of congregations spanning every major religious tradition and dozens of smaller ones, and each of those congregations is a potential source of donated books that would otherwise end up in closets, storage units, or dumpsters.
The Catholic presence is foundational. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe, established in 1850 and elevated from the Diocese of Santa Fe which dates to 1853, is one of the oldest Catholic jurisdictions in the United States. Its territory covers most of central and northern New Mexico, and the Albuquerque metro area alone contains dozens of active parishes. San Felipe de Neri in Old Town, founded in 1706, is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the country. Newer parishes in Rio Rancho, the West Side, and the South Valley serve growing communities. Catholic parish libraries, religious education programs, and institutional archives collectively represent a massive volume of religious books across the metro area. When a parish consolidates its education wing or a long-serving DRE retires, the materials that need handling can fill a truck.
The Protestant landscape is equally extensive. Albuquerque's Baptist churches alone — Southern Baptist Convention, American Baptist, National Baptist Convention, independent Baptist — could fill a directory. Calvary Church on Osuna has been a landmark of ABQ evangelical Christianity for decades. First Baptist Church downtown, Hoffmantown Church in the Northeast Heights, and numerous smaller congregations across every quadrant of the city all maintain libraries, education programs, and accumulated materials. The same is true of Methodist churches (Central United Methodist downtown, St. Paul UMC, Heights Cumberland Presbyterian), Presbyterian churches (First Presbyterian, St. Andrew Presbyterian, Covenant Presbyterian), Lutheran churches (ELCA and Missouri Synod congregations throughout the metro), and Episcopal parishes (St. John's Cathedral, St. Mark's on the Mesa).
Pentecostal and charismatic churches add another layer — Assemblies of God, Church of God, Foursquare, and independent charismatic congregations. Nondenominational megachurches like Calvary and Sagebrush have large education programs that generate curriculum volume proportional to their congregation size. Church of Christ congregations, Seventh-day Adventist churches, Churches of the Nazarene, and Disciples of Christ all maintain their own presence in the city.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints operates multiple stakes and wards across Albuquerque, with meetinghouses in virtually every neighborhood. LDS wards maintain their own libraries of church-published materials, and when the church periodically updates its curriculum — as it did with the Come Follow Me program — the previous generation of materials becomes surplus across every ward simultaneously.
Albuquerque's Jewish community centers primarily around Congregation Albert, a Reform congregation established in 1897, and Nahalat Shalom, a Jewish Renewal community. Both maintain libraries and education programs. The Chabad of New Mexico serves the Orthodox community. Jewish community organizations including the Jewish Federation of New Mexico and the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society generate and collect Jewish educational and historical materials.
The Islamic Center of New Mexico on Broadway is one of the oldest purpose-built mosques in the state, and the broader Muslim community includes additional mosques, community centers, and educational organizations. Buddhist communities include the Albuquerque Vipassana Sangha, KTC Albuquerque (Tibetan Buddhist), and several Zen groups. The Baha'i Faith has an active Albuquerque community. The First Unitarian Church and the UU Westside congregation serve the liberal religious community. Quakers meet at the Albuquerque Friends Meeting.
Every one of these communities accumulates books. Every one of them periodically needs to clear accumulated materials. And until they learn about NMLP, most of them have no plan for doing so that does not involve a dumpster, a Goodwill drop-off that rejects half the load, or indefinite storage in a closet that somebody else needs. I serve all of them, without preference or distinction. Call 702-496-4214.
Practical Guide for Volunteers
How to Organize a Congregation Book Collection
If you are the volunteer who has been tasked with clearing out your congregation's accumulated books, this section is written specifically for you. I have worked with dozens of church volunteers in this exact situation, and the single most important piece of advice I can give you is this: do not throw anything away before calling me. Do not take anything to Goodwill. Do not put anything in the dumpster. Do not let anyone haul boxes to the curb on trash day. Call 702-496-4214 first.
The reason is simple. Church collections contain surprises. I have seen a church volunteer box up what she considered junk — old books from the back of the library closet — and that box contained a first-edition C.S. Lewis that she did not recognize because the dust jacket was missing. I have seen a deacon take three truck loads to Goodwill before calling me, and the books he kept because they looked old and interesting turned out to be common reprints, while the books he discarded because they looked worn included a signed Tony Hillerman that had been donated to the church by the author himself. The volunteer who is not trained in book assessment cannot reliably distinguish between a valuable first printing and a worthless reprint by looking at the cover. That is what the assessment is for, and the assessment is free.
Here is the practical process that works best for congregations. First, designate a staging area — a fellowship hall, an empty classroom, a section of the gymnasium, a covered outdoor area. You need a space where books can be gathered and accessed by a truck. Second, consolidate everything into the staging area. Pull from the church library, the Sunday school closets, the VBS storage, the pastor's study, the youth room, the women's ministry shelving, the men's group bookshelves, the nursery, the kitchen (yes, churches accumulate cookbooks), and any off-site storage units. Get it all in one place.
Third, do a rough separation into three categories. Books go in one area. Curriculum and educational materials go in another. Everything else — records, photographs, non-book materials — goes in a third. This is not for my benefit; it is for yours, because the non-book materials may include items that your congregation wants to retain, and separating them early prevents accidental disposal. If your congregation wants to keep the photo albums, the bound meeting minutes, and the founding documents, pull those before I arrive. Everything else, I take.
Fourth, call me. I will schedule a time to come walk the staging area, do the free assessment, and either load the truck that day or schedule the pickup for a time that works for your building's calendar. If the volume is large — and for churches, it often is — I can do the pickup in stages to minimize disruption to your programming spaces. If there is a building deadline because the congregation is closing or the building has been sold, I will work within your timeline.
You do not need to sort by author, subject, or condition. You do not need to make decisions about what is valuable and what is not. You do not need to research anything online. You do not need to box everything perfectly — loose books on tables, books in banana boxes, books in trash bags (not ideal, but it happens), books still on shelves, books in stacks on the floor. I handle it all. The only thing I ask is that you do not discard anything before I have a chance to look at it. The number one mistake congregations make is throwing away the valuable things and keeping the worthless things because they could not tell the difference. Let me make that distinction for you. It is free, and it takes the burden off your volunteers.
Transparency in Handling
What Happens to Donated Religious Books
Faith communities deserve to know what happens to their donated materials, and I am going to be completely transparent about every stage of the process. NMLP is a for-profit business. I fund free pickups through the resale of books that have collector or market value. I am honest about this because trust matters, and it matters especially when you are handing over materials that your congregation has cared for and that carry spiritual significance to your community.
Every book that comes through my warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE is individually assessed. I do not bulk-process. I do not weigh books by the pound and sell them to a recycler. I pick up each book, examine it, and make a determination about where it should go. That individual assessment is the core of what makes NMLP different from Goodwill, from a junk removal company, and from the recycling bin.
Books with collector or resale value are listed through my online sales channels — primarily Amazon and eBay through my sister operation, SellBooksABQ. This includes first editions, signed copies, vintage and antique religious texts, rare hymnals, significant theological works, and out-of-print titles with active buyer markets. A first-printing C.S. Lewis that came from a church library gets listed at fair market value to a collector who will treasure it. A complete Talmud set gets listed to a buyer who needs it for study. An illuminated Haggadah gets listed to a collector who appreciates the artistry. The revenue from these sales is what funds the free pickup operation. Without it, there is no truck, no warehouse, and no free service.
Theological works, devotionals, and study materials that have reading value but not collector value get routed to organizations that can put them to use. Study Bibles are in constant demand from prison ministry programs across New Mexico. Chaplains at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the state correctional facilities, and county jails all serve populations that want access to study materials, and a used NIV Study Bible or an ESV Study Bible in readable condition is exactly what they need. Devotional books and accessible theological works go to halfway house libraries, transitional housing programs, and community organizations that serve populations with limited access to reading material.
Usable VBS and Sunday school curriculum — particularly recent editions in complete or near-complete condition — gets routed to smaller congregations, mission churches, and faith-based organizations that cannot afford to purchase new materials at retail. A small church in a rural New Mexico community with a children's ministry budget that stretches to cover snacks and craft supplies can put last year's VBS kit to excellent use. I facilitate that connection because it keeps materials in circulation and serves communities that need them.
Children's books — including Bible story books, children's devotionals, and faith-based picture books — that are in good reading condition get routed to my community distribution partners, including Little Free Libraries across Albuquerque and APS Title I school classroom libraries. A children's Bible story book does not care whether it sits on a church shelf or a school shelf; what matters is that a child picks it up and reads it.
Books that are genuinely past their useful life — water-damaged, moldy, severely foxed, incomplete, structurally compromised — go to my paper recycling partner. The paper is recovered and reprocessed. Nothing is landfilled. This is a commitment I make to every congregation, and it is the commitment that matters most to faith communities who feel uncomfortable putting books with Scripture in the trash. Your books do not end up in a landfill. Period.
If you want to see the kind of work I do with donated books, the about page tells my story, and you can visit the warehouse in person any time by appointment. Call 702-496-4214 to schedule a visit or a pickup.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you accept Bibles?
What about religious books from non-Christian traditions?
Can you pick up from my church?
Is there a minimum donation size?
Are donations tax-deductible?
Do you take VBS and Sunday school materials?
What about hymnals?
Can you help identify valuable books in my church library?
Do you work with churches outside Albuquerque?
What happens to religious books that are not valuable?
Schedule Your Congregation’s Free Pickup
Church libraries, VBS materials, Sunday school curriculum, hymnals, Bibles, and more. Free pickup from any Albuquerque-area congregation. Every faith tradition welcome.
Call or Text 702-496-4214NMLP is a for-profit business. I fund free pickups through the resale of individually identified collectible and specialty titles. I am transparent about my model because I believe trust matters, especially with faith communities.