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Office of the Secretary >
Records Management > Advice for Congregations
> Parish Register
© You may copy this document for congregational use providing
copyright is acknowledged. Revised 2005.
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For teaching purposes, a
 PowerPoint Presentation
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Director for Records
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course in
Congregation
Administration, which includes maintaining the parish register and other useful topics.
The Model Constitution
for Congregations stipulates that the pastor of a congregation of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “shall keep accurate parochial
records of all baptisms, confirmations, marriages, burials,
communicants, members received, members dismissed, or members excluded
from the congregation; shall submit a summary of such statistics
annually to the synod . . .” (*C9.12.a. and b.). These guidelines are
prepared to assist pastors and other congregational leaders in their
task of keeping a parish register.Care
Never leave
your parish register vulnerable to destruction. Keeping a copy of the
parish register, in the same or another format, will provide
security for it today. However, for long term preservation
you must select a format that is not dependent on hardware and
software, that quickly become obsolete, in order to read it. For legal
and historical purposes, consider one of the following means of
securing your parish register:
Duplication and dispersal!
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Maintain the traditional parish register in addition to the
electronic database.
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Print
out once each year, on acid free paper, the necessary reports that
constitute a parish register and care for them as you would the
traditional parish register.
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Have
microfilm copies of your parish register made at reasonable
intervals.
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Scan
the parish register onto CD-ROM discs.
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Take
digital photographs of the pages of the parish register.
- Record
all changes, such as accessions, transfers, deaths, or removal for
inactivity, in the minutes of the annual Congregational Meeting.
Retention
A duplicate copy, in
one of the above formats, should be kept at a remote location,
preferably a bank safe deposit box. Remember that digital
information is not preserved by accident. If these methods are used,
you must commit to reformatting the files as hardware and software
change.
For additional
information on the pros and cons of each of these formats please see
the document, A Comparison of Microfilming
and Scanning Technologies.
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