wfn.org | Commission members object to sale of church records

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Sept. 27, 2000  News media contact: Thomas S.
McAnally·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.     10-71B{434}

By Robert Lear*

BALTIMORE (UMNS) -- Interested in collecting old church records?  How about
Sunday school pins, commemorative church plates or cookbooks?

Try eBay, the Internet auction site.

Although not on the formal agenda of the United Methodist Commission on
Archives and History at its Sept. 22-23 meeting, the auctioning of church
membership and baptismal records surfaced as a concern for some of the
agency's directors and staff.

Pins, plates and cookbooks are fair game, it was agreed, but church
membership records belong to the church and not to individuals and placing
them on the auction block is improper. "Church records don't walk home with
you," said L. Dale Patterson, archivist and records administrator for the
commission.

The situation usually arises in small membership churches where the person
in charge of records keeps the materials at home. Eventually they are found
by family members clearing out a residence who do not realize the
significance of the documents.

Purchasers of the records likely are to be involved in genealogy or baptism
research. In at least one instance, a commission member, seeing the eBay
listings, located the purchaser, who willingly turned the records over after
photocopying the parts in which he was interested.

For many people involved in research, the commission's Web site is a popular
reference.  Patterson said the page currently is logging about 9,000 users a
month, up from 6,000 a year ago.  The Web site address is www.gcah.org

A major item of business for the commission during its Baltimore meeting was
organizing for the 2001-2004 quadrennium.

Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey, Columbia, S.C., was elected president, and the
Rev. Patricia J. Thompson, Morrisville, Vt., was re-elected secretary. The
vice president's slot will be filled by a newly elected bishop from the
Philippines.

The Rev. Charles Yrigoyen Jr., was re-elected general secretary and in a few
months will begin his 20th year in the post.

During a banquet session at the historic Lovely Lane United Methodist
Church, sometimes called the "mother church" of Methodism in America, the
commission's Distinguished Service Award was presented posthumously to the
late Rev. Thomas A. Langford, theologian, historian and author. Langford
served on the faculty of United Methodist-related Duke Divinity School in
Durham, N.C.

The Rev. Russell E. Richey, historian and dean of Candler School of Theology
at United Methodist-related Emory University in Atlanta, was chosen to
receive the 2001 award. It will be presented during the Sept. 21-23 meeting
at the commission's headquarters in Madison, N.J.

In other business, the commission staff was asked to keep in touch with the
future of Mt. Olivet cemetery in Baltimore and the impact of its financial
difficulties on the noted "bishops' plot," which contains the remains of
Bishop Francis Asbury, "father" of Methodism in the United States; the Rev.
E. Stanley Jones, famed author, spiritual leader and missionary in India;
Robert Strawbridge, who formed the first Methodist class meeting in America
about 1763; and other notable historic Methodist figures. It has been
reported that the cemetery is facing bankruptcy.

Some of the commission directors stayed on for the annual meeting of the
Historical Society of the United Methodist Church. The theme for the
sessions was developed around the organization of the United Brethren in
Christ, a predecessor body of today's United Methodist Church. The church
was organized on a farm near Frederick, Md., exactly 200 years earlier,
Sept. 25. 

Directors joined members of the congregation of Old Otterbein United
Methodist Church in planting a tree on the church grounds in recognition of
the bicentennial. The church, situated in the heart of Baltimore's
professional baseball, football and convention facilities, carries the name
of the first bishop of the United Brethren in Christ, Philip William
Otterbein, and is the oldest religious structure in continuous use in the
city, dating from 1785. Otterbein was pastor of the church for 39 years.
# # #
*Lear is the retired director of the Washington office of United Methodist
News Service. 

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United Methodist News Service
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