From the St. Luke Session (written by the current Moderator of that Session, your Summer Pastor Heidi Vardeman)

Presbyterians are known for being “decent and in order.” We can’t help it—the founder of our theological and church tradition (John Calvin) was a lawyer before becoming a religious leader. There’s always something a bit lawyerly about how we conduct business.

We’re also pretty good at the business of church. One example is how we keep track of church members. At this week’s Session meeting, there was discussion about what to do with people on our church’s official membership rolls whom we never see. The Deacons are particularly concerned about this because each is assigned a specific number of church members to contact. Our Deacons are a hardworking lot. They grow frustrated when they can’t reach someone whose name they’ve been given.

Sometimes people have moved away. Or they are adult children of members. They may even have joined other churches. Or, for heaven’s sake, they may have passed away! Who knows? If they don’t respond to the Deacons’ efforts to contact them, do they even want to be part of our church community in any way?

The Session has decided to reach out to these people to ask whether they want to continue to be considered members of our church. If they say yes—great! We’ll keep them on the rolls. We’ll also offer them the option to be considered a “friend of the church.” They can indicate whether they want to receive the weekly online newsletter and other regular communications, or prefer only occasional updates.

We don’t want to kick anyone out of our church. But we also don’t want our Deacons to feel they are derelict in their duties if they can’t reach some of the people whose names they have been given. If we can’t reach a person despite a genuine effort, we will remove them from the membership rolls. In addition, we pay $43.75 to the denomination for each active member, so it would be nice to put that money toward some of St Luke’s specific mission concerns.

It’s a pain to keep our membership rolls accurate, but we Presbyterians like to make sure things are in order. We just can’t help it.

Clerk of Session Mark Taintor and Summer Pastor Heidi Vardeman will put forward a plan to the Session next month to figure out how to reach people we haven’t heard from recently. If you have any ideas how they might do this effectively, please let one of them know!