One colleague calls it “Amnesty April.” Others call it “data cleanup” and “data scrubbing.”
Whatever the name, this month at the church I serve we will initiate a thorough cleanup of our membership data. That may seem a small and mechanical matter, but I think it cuts to the heart of what we do.
Three times every week, for example, we send out 5,700 e-mail newsletters. About 1,000 of them bounce back as “invalid addresses.” That means we aren’t reaching 18% of our membership.
Another example: in sending out invitations to “People Meeting People” dinners, we have run into two situations: some respond that they left this congregation years ago; newer members wonder why we aren’t inviting them. In other words, our membership data is out of date and incomplete.
In order to serve people, we must be able to reach people. If we have inaccurate e-mail addresses, postal addresses, and/or telephone numbers, we are functionally out of touch.
Our long-term response is a new membership data system, which we will start to implement in May. But there is no point in simply exporting bad data from one system to another. So next month, we will ask every individual and family to update its membership data. This will happen on Sunday mornings and in other ways.
I am sure many members will find it an irritating exercise. As the culprit causing it, I can only explain that our goals are to serve people effectively and to have a clear picture of who we are as God’s people gathered. How can measure progress unless we can count accurately?
I will also say that there is a certain Gospel imperative to knowing names correctly. Names mattered to Jesus. It mattered who went to the tomb and who looked in. It mattered who saw Jesus after his resurrection. The Gospel is always about people — people known by name, touched specifically, treasured as God’s beloved.
Being able to reach each other is more than good business management. It is critical to our life as the Body of Christ.
Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project.
