Do you have a church directory?
Do you have inactive members listed?
How about unmarried couples - do you list them together - what if they have kids.
How about a (married) couple - and they have adult children who live in a distant city?
Others you would list or not list?
Church Directories
Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by Salty, Oct 12, 2012.
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I don't remember ever being in a church that did not have a directory of some kind.
They usually get updated annually, unless there was a major change (new pastor for example). During the update people who have not been around for 6 months should be dropped. Prior to this elders and people who know those who are MIA should have already contacted them a few times. Those who have moved or resigned are removed with no issue.
Unmarried couples are listed as singles. Children are listed with their mother.
There should be an easy to find lost of leaders (elders and deacons) and the secretaries office line and church email address.
I have not seen any off the wall lists so I am not sure how to answer that. -
Church members are distinguished with an asterisk after their names.
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Church directories are sooooo 1980's. :laugh:
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Our church secretary maintains a list of all members, regardless of their status. However this list isn't distributed to the general congregation. The information on inactive members, for whatever reason, is available, when the need arises.
She also maintains and periodically makes available a list of those active in the church, whether members or not. We have a few people in our church who do not want to move their membership to ours, yet you'd think they were members with regards to their faithfulness to our church. Hands-on ministry people. That's probably a subject for another thread.
Married couples are listed together. Singles are listed separately. Young children are not listed. Since we are a fairly small church, most know who belongs to whom in that regard.
There is one exception to the "inactive". These are members who are confined to resthomes and such and cannot physically attend church. However, their contact information is made available to those who want to keep in touch.
The other "inactive" members aren't forgotton and simply written off either. Periodically, our church will do some type of outreach to them. To those we know aren't attending a church somewhere else. Sometimes done through the Deacon Fellowship, and sometimes through the congregation as a whole. We have had positive results from things as simple as sending a "Thinking of You" card to an MIA.
Probably more than you ever wanted to know about our church membership lists. :flower: -
Our church directory is updated yearly. It's just a printed directory - we've done a few picture directories but haven't done one in about 8 years. A few answers:
* Inactive members aren't listed because you must fill out a bulletin insert in order to be in the directory so if you are not there, you're not in.
* Unmarried couples are not listed together unless we don't know they are not married (Yes, this has happened and when we found out, they were asked "Well, aren't you going to fix that??" since they had kids together. They were married 4 weeks later - LOL)
* All children who attend the church who are over 18 are listed separately from their parents. If they are away at college, we will list them if requested. If they are adult and have their own lives apart from their parents and live away, they are not attending to fill out the insert.
We always have a separate section in the back for our deaf congregation (they requested this) and another section for "friends who have moved away" so that regular attendees who have moved away can have their new info listed for a year. -
Unmarried Couples??????
Bro.Greg -
Maybe...but....
Bro.Greg:thumbs: -
I have been a member of different churches who have had directories. Whatever. They become outdated as soon as they are completed.
Now, my church directory is Facebook. -
Stickin' With The Printed Page..
Others feel have no problems with it....I just choose not to. That said though...you are pretty much right though SW...the printed Directories do get outdated quickly.
Bro.Greg -
We have a printed directory and we have empty pages in the back, which we fill with stickers as new people join.
Members are noted with an asterisk.
people who leave are taken out as new editions are made. They are all done small scale and in house so it is easy to make revisions.
You will always have someone in it who has moved, left the church, died etc but that is not really a problem. -
I believe we have had engaged people together a few times.
If they were scheduled to get married shortly after the directory was printed. I think this did happen once.