News and Views

Are your church’s archives a disorganized mess with scattered papers and no clear system? Do you have questions about what documents are must-haves in an archive, or best practices to protect documents? Help is available.

Rev. Bonnie McCubbin, director of museums and pilgrimage, also serves as the conference archivist. She offers a class, “Should It Stay or Should It Go,” for churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. McCubbin believes a strong, well-kept archive helps tell the stories future generations will seek out.

“I’m a historian; I’m a pastor, trying to figure out how we tell our story,” McCubbin said. “Everything I try to do in my role is how do I better tell the story of God and the story of the people called Methodists, and the story of individuals and where they intersect with one another.”

“So in order to tell the story, we need to have documents. We need to have things preserved. History just isn’t in the past; it’s what we’re writing today,” she added.

What should stay?

A lot of paper moves through churches. That can include anything and everything from membership documents, baptism certificates, offering envelopes, service bulletins, and more.

McCubbin explained there are some absolute essentials that every congregation, no matter what, should make sure to archive. That includes membership records.

“They should always keep a hard copy of their membership records,” McCubbin said. “If you’re doing it electronically, that’s fine, but once a year you should print the records so that you have a hard copy of it.”

Baptism and marriage certificates are considered vital records, which can’t be reissued. So it’s important to make sure that those documents are well-stored.

Pictures are also helpful in archives to tell the story of the congregation over the decades or centuries. However, they only provide value to archives if they are labeled; otherwise, their relevance will fade over time.

“Even if everyone knows that’s Rev. Jones in the picture, you need to label it,” McCubbin said. “Because in 50 years, no one is going to know who that is. Pictures without labels have very little historic or archival value.”

A frequent question congregations have, McCubbin said, involves what to do with the foundational texts – like Bibles and Hymnals.

She recommended reaching out to hospitals or nursing homes to see if their residents have a need for the books, but congregations can dispose of them in a reverential manner if those options don’t pan out.

“When in doubt, you can always say a prayer of thanksgiving for the ministry that they’ve had and recycle them or dispose of them appropriately according to your local jurisdiction’s policies,” McCubbin said.

Document care and upkeep

McCubbin also noted that not all document storage systems are created equally, and some assumptions about document care are no longer common practice.

That includes the use of boxes, which can hold in moisture and allow mold to grow and spread. Paper clips and staples can also deteriorate a document, as rust forms on them over time. Instead, traditional metal filing cabinets offer some of the most consistent protection for documents.

But perhaps one of the biggest cardinal rules is that records should stay in the church office or area where they are stored. A constant flow of documents in and out of the archives can lead to lost history and potentially damage them.

“Church records should never go home,” McCubbin said. “They should always be kept in the church office or other designated location. That’s so that anyone who needs them has access to them, or in case there’s an emergency, you know where to find them.”

“If you have everything in one location, then in the heat of an emergency, in the heat of the moment, you know exactly where to go and what to grab,” she added.

Handling the documents, too, does not require thick protective gloves like some might assume. That can sometimes lead to ripped documents, since it decreases the dexterity of a person’s fingers.

Another common mistake is overly relying on the technology of the decade, which can quickly become obsolete. Paper, McCubbin emphasized, remains a tried and true method to keep documents accessible, or at the very least, continue to update the storage technology as technology progresses and advances.

“The problem with online media is that it’s not inherently stable,” McCubbin said. “File formats change. I have 400-year-old documents I can pull out of a file folder and read, and I have 25-year-old floppy disks and 15-year-old CDs that my computer can’t play anymore. If you’re keeping things electronically, you have to be able to update them on a regular basis.”

The archives for the conference are located in the basement of Lovely Lane UMC in Baltimore, and can be available by appointment. Contact Rev. Bonnie McCubbin.

See a manual of guidelines for archives.