Membership Part Two: Fixing the Problem
Last week, I wrote about why keeping track of membership in The Episcopal Church is challenging. In short, because membership in the Body of Christ is by virtue of Baptism and because there are only a few ministries that require your baptismal record to be held by a specific parish, individuals can be active in a congregation for decades without actually becoming a member of that congregation. If you did not get a chance to read last week’s article, I hope you will because it will help explain why cleaning up our membership records matters.
This week, I want to say a little bit more about how and why our records are incomplete and then propose a few steps we can take to make them better. In the end, my goal is for every single one of us to have a meaningful, fruitful relationship with God within the community of faith with whom we pursue that relationship. Whether it is by clarifying your membership or simply reminding you why membership matters, I think this work will help us achieve that.
I will begin by defining three terms that St. Paul’s uses to describe individuals’ relationship with our parish: member, non-member, and prospective. If you are baptized or confirmed at St. Paul’s, you are a member of St. Paul’s by virtue of that sacramental encounter. As you would expect, those are the easiest records to establish and maintain.
Other members are individuals who have been baptized somewhere else but whose baptismal record has been either transferred to or recorded by St. Paul’s. Many congregations are able and willing to transfer the record of your baptism (and thus your membership) to our church. When they do so, you become a member of St. Paul’s by virtue of that transfer. Other churches, whether because their records have been lost or because they refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of our denomination, cannot or will not transfer your record, so instead we record your baptism in our parish register based on any certificates, family records, or collective memories that you have. Regardless, you become just as much a member of St. Paul’s as anyone else.
Some individuals are active in the life of our congregation but are not (and do not want to become) members of St. Paul’s. We identify them as non-members. They might be members of another congregation in northwest Arkansas but enjoy receiving our newsletter and coming to parish events. They might live in Fayetteville for only half of the year, and their primary membership is in a church in another location. They might come to town for baseball games or to see their college-age children and want to stay in relationship with St. Paul’s but never plan to join. Or they might not be Christians but enjoy being a part of what St. Paul’s does in the wider community.
In all cases, these non-members are welcome in our church. As I wrote last week, there are very few ministries and activities that are member-specific, and we want to honor those who choose to be a part of our church family without joining St. Paul’s. For example, by designating someone as a non-member, it helps us know not to contact them about the annual giving campaign, though many of them contribute regularly to our church. Like the term member, the non-member designation is a settled status that implies that someone has a long-term way of engaging the life of our parish.
The third term is prospective, which is an umbrella term we assign to anyone who comes into the life of St. Paul’s but has not indicated whether they want to be a member or settle into the long-term status of non-member. Whenever someone fills out a Connect Card, we add them to our database and newsletter list, and we send them information about our parish, but, unless they have indicated otherwise, they are recorded as a prospective. Until we learn that they want to join St. Paul’s or remain in relationship without joining, they remain a prospective—sometimes for many years.
To make things more complicated, there is currently a fourth term we use in our database: TBD. Several years ago, we upgraded our membership and accounting database and transferred all our digital records from one platform to another. This was a good move, and I am glad we did it. Unfortunately, however, many of the membership status designations did not transfer, resulting in TBD. We still have all the baptismal records written in our parish registers, but it takes a long, long time to dig through those registers to update all of the incomplete digital records. We need your help with that.
Next week, I plan to send out emails to all the different groups letting you know what your membership designation is and asking for your help updating it. If you are recorded as a member, you will not need to do anything unless you have moved to another church and want us to transfer your membership. If you are recorded as a non-member, you also will not need to do anything unless you want to become a member of our church. If you are recorded as a prospective, I will encourage you to decide whether you would like to join St. Paul’s or remain in relationship with us as a non-member. Finally, if you are one of the TBDs, I will ask you to help us update your digital record by indicating whether you are a member and approximately when you became a member of St. Paul’s. We will use the information you give us to track down the written record and update our database.
I want to say a little bit about the process of transferring in or out of a parish and why that procedure is followed very carefully. As I mentioned last week, we become members of the universal Church—the Body of Christ—through Baptism. In the waters of Baptism, God establishes an insoluble bond between us and Christ. No matter where we go or what church we attend or what we believe, we will always be a member of Christ’s body, the Church.
Because of that, if someone is a member of St. Paul’s but no longer wants to be a part of our congregation, we cannot simply cancel their membership. We can transfer it to another congregation. We can mark them inactive and ensure that they will never hear from us. But we cannot change a member into a non-member except through transfer or death. That is also why we have many people in our parish register who are technically members of St. Paul’s even though they long-ago moved to another church. We need to hear from that other church before we can transfer their membership and update their status
I hope everyone finds a church where they can be faithful to God and take part fully in the life of that congregation. I would love for that to be St. Paul’s, but, if not, I want it to be somewhere else. If someone moves away or joins another church in town, they should ask their new church to reach out to us to transfer their baptismal record. Only then can we let go of our pastoral responsibility to care for them as a member of our congregation.
If you call St. Paul’s and ask us to transfer your record to another church, we will instead ask you to reach out to your new church to initiate that transfer. That way we can be sure that your baptismal record is not lost in the mail. Although it may seem silly, membership transfer forms are in triplicate so that both churches can be sure that the transfer has been initiated and completed. Only when the transferring-out congregation receives confirmation that the individual has been added to the new congregation’s roll will they remove the individual from their membership.
In the end, what matters is not where your membership in Christ’s body is recorded but where it is pursued. I hope that the process of cleaning up our membership records gives you the chance to get in touch with what it means for you to be active in the work of the church. Keep an eye out for the emails I will send next week. You may be surprised to learn how we have your status recorded at St. Paul’s. Regardless of that status, look for ways to deepen your relationship with God within a community of faith, and take this process as an invitation to renew your commitment to God and the church.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
