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Managing Mennonite Memory: Archives Heading for the 21st Centuryby Dennis Stoesz
This is the first of a series of articles for records managers,
congregational historians, conference historians and secretaries
With this column, I want to discuss with you the management of our current, inactive and archival records. I want to explore the What, Who, Where, How, Why and When of records. What are the records that we are talking about? Who is working with these records? Where are the records being kept? How do we decide the value of our current, inactive and archival records? Why are we working with these records in the first place? And when is the when? I believe the answers to these questions are crucial for retaining our memory as we head into the 21st century.
These questions are directed specifically to you as a) congregational historians, as b) members of conference historical committees, and as c) administrative assistants in various departments at boards and agencies of the Mennonite Church. It is also directed to you d) as records managers of several departments of an organization, and to you e) as librarians and archivists at the regional archives. I hope to hear your reflections on these questions, and publish in this column reports of your work and experience.
Several tools have been developed over the years to help answer these questions. Two that come to mind are The Task of the Congregational Historian (1994), and Guidelines for the Retention and Disposition of Records... for Mennonite Church Boards and Agencies (1989). In my next column, October 1998, I want to talk specifically about congregational records, and give an example of how one church is working with their records.
Paper, Paper, Paper...
Each Sunday when I go to the church mailbox, I find more paper. The Mennonite, a letter to congregational members informing us of a new pastor, the Indiana-Michigan Conference Gospel Evangel, a stewardship profile to fill out, and the schedule for serving coffee. These papers are in addition to the church bulletin with its "News and Notes" and inserts tucked inside that I picked up after the morning worship service.
What is to be done with all this paper, when I have finished reading through it? That question is important to me because my work as an archivist centers on the long-term preservation of important papers. In the items listed above, what would you consider to be of archival value?
Who is in charge of keeping this paper, or making decisions about its long-term value? I I throw away all my mail from my church box after I am finished with it. I look to the church secretary and the congregational historian to decide what to keep for the long term.
I must admit that I want to keep everything. I enjoy history and know how valuable these papers can be for telling the faith pilgrimage of a congregation. I also admit that I am frustrated by having to deal with so much paper in this "information age." Why do I receive so much information in my mail box in the first place? I want to throw it all away!
My ultimate goal, however, is not to keep everything or throw everything away, but to come up with a balanced view of the short- and long-term importance of these records. This is the goal of this column.
Church Bulletins, 1948-1998
January 18, 1948, the Scottdale (Pa.) Mennonite Church issued its first weekly church bulletin. The next Sunday, the bulletin was numbered Vol. I, No. 2. I find that this use of a bulletin in 1948 mirrored what a few other Mennonite churches were starting to do. While some churches, like Prairie Street, Elkhart, Indiana, began using bulletins already in 1942, it seems this was the exception rather than the rule. This event was noticed by Melvin Gingerich, custodian of the Archives of the Mennonite Church. He wrote an article on "Church Bulletins as Church History," in the May 31, 1949 issue of the Gospel Herald. "As Mennonites, we have not done as much as have certain denominations in recording faithfully the events of our American church history." But now the church bulletin can become a "permanent recording of weekly local church history." Gingerich went on to encourage persons who printed the bulletins to keep a complete set at the church, and to send one set to the Archives.
Today in 1998, we can celebrate the 50th anniversary of the use of the church bulletin in Mennonite congregations. Through these years, the Archives has received and filed these church bulletins into individual Congregation Archive Collections. It is amazing to see such a complete set of church bulletins, such as the set from 1948-1990 from Scottdale Mennonite Church, housed in a few archive boxes. In 1990, Scottdale began sending the bulletins to the regional archives of the Allegheny Mennonite Conference at Somerset, Pennsylvania, which had just been established.
Now as we head for the 21st century, I hear people asking questions, such as "Of what use is keeping all these church bulletins?" "Where do you have room to put all that stuff? Aren't you soon going to be full?" "Aren't minutes of congregational and council meetings more important to keep than bulletins?" For some smaller congregations, the church bulletin is the one regular piece of paper that the pastor and/or spouse have produced, and so are extremely valuable. For other churches, the bulletin is just one of many things distributed to members: newsletters, "News and Notes," church directories, pictorial directories, financial reports, and minutes of congregational meetings. In these cases, the importance of the bulletin needs to be weighed against these other papers.
It is these kinds of questions and answers I hope explore to more fully in this column. Part of the answer also lies in having each congregational historian examine what records the congregation has produced over the last number of years. By making a list of the materials, one can then see all these records together, and can begin to make decisions on what is of value for the long term.
An Experiment at the Boards and Agencies of the Mennonite Church, 1998
In 1953 the Mennonite Church officially adopted the Guidelines for Retention and Disposition of Records ... for Mennonite Church Boards and Agencies. The focus of this policy was on the "retention of records" hoping to avoid their destruction. It encouraged church officers to be good stewards of their records, to kept them as part of a sacred trust, and to see their correspondence as part of the official records of the church.
Part of the reason for this emphasis on "retention" was that some church leaders had destroyed their papers in the 1940s. This left a huge hole in the story of the Mennonite Church's spiritual pilgrimage. The Historical Committee of the Mennonite Church wanted to guard against such losses in the future.
The evidence of the success of these Guidelines is seen in the well organized archival collections of the church at the Archives in Goshen, Indiana. It is truly breath-taking to page through the listings of these collections, and have the story of the church unfold before one's eyes: Mennonite General Conference (1898-1971), Peace Problems Committee (1917- ); Mennonite Board of Missions (1882- ); Women's Missionary and Service Commission (1915- ), Hispanic Mennonite Convention (1975- ), Mennonite Central Committee (1920), La Junta Mennonite School of Nursing (1914-1958), and so on.
Now years later, the need is to find realistic ways to handle the mass of records being produced by the church every day. For this reason the Guidelines for the Retention and Disposition of Records were revised in 1989. The policy's focus shifted to the "disposition of records." It starts by saying: "Records are important. However, the long-range retention of all records is not important." The Guidelines then name specific factors that help determine their short-term and long-term value: legal, historical, administrative and financial functions of the records.
One very useful guideline for getting rid of paper is to "archive by originating agency. Reports, minutes and other documents created by one agency and used by another agency is archived by the originating agency."
Recently, I have made contact with the program boards to ask them to take these guidelines one step further by developing a "Records Retention and Disposition Schedule" for each organization. The initial step is to do a survey of their current, inactive and archival records. From this survey, a schedule can be developed for each board. Of course, this project will mean hard work, and will take three to five years to complete.
How effective such a specific records schedule will be is hard to judge, so I have called this an "Experiment at the Mennonite Church." This column can be one place to discuss and report how each organization is coming along in working with its records.
Heading for the 21st Century
As we work on this specific task of managing records, I need to keep in mind that the larger goal in all of this is "to preserve our heritage, to interpret our story, and to proclaim God's work among us" (mission statement of the Historical Committee, 1995). With this statement of faith before us, I hope we can become good stewards by developing workable guidelines to manage our current, inactive and archival records as we head into the 21st century.
Dennis Stoesz has been archivist for the Mennonite Church since 1989
Last updated 7 September 1999