Cleaning House - and Records!

Administration isn’t the most exciting part of ministry. But it’s an important part. United Methodist Elders (that’s what I am) are ordained to Word, Sacrament, Service, and Order. Order is about the “ordering” – or administration – of the church.

One of the requirements of the United Methodist Book of Discipline is that each church or congregation keep its membership rolls up to date. They are to conduct an annual audit to make certain that everyone on the rolls are active, participating members of the church; and to gracefully make arrangements to remove those who aren’t.

The membership rolls of High Street UMC haven’t been tended to regularly or recently. Part of this probably relates to COVID: High Street UMC “shut down” to in person worship for a short time, and many people got out of the habit of coming to worship. It’s also true that people move away, decide to attend other churches, die, or otherwise make decisions to stop attending a given church, but don’t tell their “old” church. And despite our weekly requests, many people don’t sign in. We understand all of these things.

We’re in the process of cleaning up our membership rolls. Persons who are listed as members, constituents, or “active” attenders, but for whom we have records of no contact (through attendance or giving) for the past five years (i.e., pre-COVID) will be sent a letter. They’ll be given the opportunity to tell us if our records aren’t correct, or even if they are, whether they want to renew their relationship with the church. Or they can confirm that they have chosen another path. If we don’t hear from them, we’ll try again next year before removing them permanently (this is the UMC process).

Records can be wrong and we acknowledge that. We’re trying to clean ours up. We appreciate all the help you can provide in this process.