How to Prepare Sunday School Records
"I have no record of that” … six words that can be very frustrating whether calling to check on an order you’ve placed or dealing with a repair on your car. We expect people to keep records and for the records to be effective enough for them to follow through. Your Sunday School deserves the best records possible in order to identify people and their needs, track participation, and give some indication their personal growth.
Preparation for a new Sunday School year provides the opportunity to put into place an effective Sunday School record system. A good record system should include an up-to-date member roll and an up-to-date prospect file. Every name in the member file and prospect file represents a person who needs a regular systematic encounter with God and the ministry of a concerned Sunday School class. The member and prospect data in your records tell who people are, where they live, what their spiritual condition is, and to which group they have been assigned. Weekly individual member and class records tell who is and who is not present.
A record system takes the efforts of Sunday School out of the realm of generalization and personalizes it. Record keeping becomes a way in which leaders have accountability for members and members become accountable for commitments they have made to their class, church, and God.
Select a record system that fits your church’s needs and that provides for recording pertinent personal, family, spiritual development, and Sunday School participation for every individual.
Gather the information needed to update your records. If your church is like many churches you will need to obtain more information in order to be able to update your records. One of the best ways to do this may be to re-register everyone for Sunday School. This does not mean beginning again with your Sunday School enrollment, but re-registering everyone and updating information. To do this follow the following steps:
- Select two consecutive Sundays.
- Orient your leaders to the process.
- Ask every Sunday School teacher to have each person enrolled in his or her class fill out a new enrollment card on one of those two Sundays. Make sure that all of the information is completed on the enrollment card including date of birth information.
- Ask teachers to follow-up with those in their class or department that have not completed the re-registration.
- Using the information gathered, update all of the registration information.
Prepare the individual member record cards and class files. You will want to make sure that your records systems has in place a way that every teacher has full access to the attendance pattern of every member and knows when they are absent and present.
Put in place a written policy for Sunday School records. Include in the policy: how new members are to be enrolled, how members may be dropped from Sunday School, and the process for handling Sunday School records on Sunday morning and other times.
Plan a specific training time to train everyone that has any form of responsibility for Sunday School.
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