After my interest was peeked during one of our annual homecomings, I set out to discover our local church history. The church minutes became my first stop.  I began reading through them.  The many interesting stories handwritten on scraps of paper, stuck between the pages, became a wonderful find.  This find gave me a great idea to formulate a new plan. That was about ten years ago.  I have completed the history, but I am in the rewriting and editing stage of the process. 

 Because I place high importance on preserving local church history, I want to share what I've learned along my journey.  If you to have the desire to preserve and keep your church history alive, following these steps will help get you started.  However, I am hopeful it won't take you ten years to complete like it has me. 

• Look at your church minutes.  Our church had a policy that stated the minutes were not to be removed from the church.  I copied the pages from every book, not all at once, but when I had time or completed a section, I took my ream of paper to the church office and stood in front of the copier for hours making copies.  This gave me the chance to go through them at my own speed as I had the time. When you begin your search, look for the more interesting happenings.  If your church was established in the early 1800's like ours, you will likely become curious about certain items.  If you don’t understand some of the terminology, do research, find out what they meant when they wrote about certain things.
• Check your local libraries for information as to what church life was like during the period you are writing.  I found at our local college library many books about communities in our county with photographs.  The added information gave me a better understanding of what life was like during the time I researched.
• Our local newspaper was also a valuable resource.  The newspaper clippings and headlines were helpful in understanding the importance of church, life and family in the community.
• Here is the best idea and the most fun.  Interview older people in the church to more fully discover what church was really like.  I used a hand held audio recorder, turned it on and began discussions about what baptisms, fellowships, and general church life was like for them.  I was amazed at the many stories that came my way.   (Check the article page for Stories from a Country Church)
• In addition to interviewing older people, don't forget to interview youth leaders, deacons, women organizations etc for information from more recent years.  All will likely have stories, favorite moments and colorful additions for your history.
• Be careful of using names in a negative light.  If something bad is in your church history, you can touch upon it but don't linger there to long.  your purpose isn't to hurt people. 
• Include a page for the children.  I had our first and second graders draw pictures of their favorite part of church.  These are priceless.
• Embrace others in the church by adding a page that says My Favorite thing about our Church is…I did this and then had various church members complete the sentence and sign it.  All of these will be included in the completed church history.     

Here are a couple of links that you can check that have even more information on preserving church history. http://www.kybaptist.org/kbc/welcome.nsf/pages/ExecutiveArchives

http://www.sbhla.org/Articles.htm

 One final thought, if your church is interested in preserving local church history but doesn't have the time or a volunteer to compile your history, contact me for an estimate.