CONGREGATIONAL LIFE

Records Management

Church records tell the story of your congregation and your ministries. They highlight how God has worked and is working through your congregation and how you are bringing God’s love to life. They are integral to our history as the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand. From these records, we can gather and tell the stories about who we are, who we belong to, and God’s faithfulness to us.

Your church records will let future generations know how God has blessed you and how he has been a blessing to others through you. There are two reasons to keep good church records:

Firstly, you must keep records to fulfil administrative and legal requirements, such as recording decisions, finances and significant events.
Secondly, you must also keep the ‘soul’ records that complement these legal records and turn them into the story of God’s faithfulness.

To keep good records, you need to ensure they are being properly created and documented in the first place. Take photographs of events. Document the meetings, ministries, events and stories of the people who reach out into the community, showing how we live out God’s love.

Lutheran Archives

Australian Taxation Office

What records to keep

To help you with your record keeping, we have compiled the lists below of records you need to create, manage and keep.

These records should initially be managed at your congregation’s premises (not in a member’s home). When they are no longer being regularly accessed, many should be deposited at Lutheran Archives (as indicated below).

Please note some of these records are not required to be deposited at Lutheran Archives but should be managed onsite in your congregation.

Lutheran Archives is here to support you in your ministries. It can assist you with:

advice on managing your records
caring for your permanent records that you no longer regularly access.

For information on your legal and tax record-keeping requirements, go to https://business.gov.au/finance/accounting/record-keeping

The Australian Taxation Office also provides help and resources for financial records management.

LCA Policies

Records to be managed at your premises

Records you must create, manage appropriately and keep onsite:

records you regularly access
statistics like service and communion attendance (these are needed for district and LCA statistics purposes)
records within their statutory and auditable period, for example, finances for seven years
work health and safety records – inspections, checklists and maintenance schedule
Safe Church records – Working with Children type checks, training completed, risk assessments, etc, as these are confidential records (talk to your Safe Church Coordinator for more information)
pastoral care records (confidential)
employment agreements (confidential) and position descriptions
bulletins – many congregations like to retain a complete set of their weekly bulletins. These do not need to be deposited at Lutheran Archives but can be kept by the congregation

Note: All confidential records should be stored in locked file cabinets or rooms. They should be accessible only to a restricted number of appropriate people who need to access the information. Electronic storage of confidential data should be protected via firewalls, encryption and passwords. Hard copies of confidential documents or information no longer required must be shredded.

The LCA 06.09 Privacy Policy can be found on the LCA Policies page.

Records to be kept onsite and then sent to Lutheran Archives

These permanent records must be kept onsite until you no longer regularly access them. They should then be sent to Lutheran Archives. Lutheran Archives recommend a periodic review of your records and regular depositing. You could set an annual reminder in your calendar.

Registers – baptisms, confirmations, marriages and burials
Minutes – parish and congregation meetings
Minutes – management committee (for example, parish council, church council, executive, elders)
Minutes – all committees and groups (for example, worship, evangelism, women's, men's, youth, Sunday school, property)

Selected correspondence – all committees and groups. It must be permanently kept if it helps tell the congregation story and facilitate understanding minutes or other documents (for example, appended documents). If it is purely ‘administrative’, it can be destroyed when it is no longer useful
Selected financial records – your annual financial statements and details of significant purchases, for example, an organ or a stained-glass window. This can also include subscriptions, donations or pledges to special appeals and funds, such as organ restoration appeals or building funds. (Lutheran Archives do not require weekly finances, and it is not necessary to keep bank statements, chequebook butts, invoices, receipts, collection books, cash books, etc, beyond the seven-year legal requirement)
Annual reports – congregation, parish, committees, groups
Annual membership lists or membership database – ensure they are dated and named with your congregation
Sunday school and youth records (for example, attendance rolls)
Call documents and agreements for pastors
Legal documents – constitutions, property titles
Building plans
Newsletters – regular, monthly, quarterly (it can be simplest to add Lutheran Archives to your mailing list)
Publications – histories, brochures, anniversary booklets and special service orders/bulletins for installations, dedications, anniversaries and other significant events
Selected photographs and audiovisual material: tapes, video and film (of buildings, pastors, members, special occasions). If you record your weekly services, please only deposit a representative sampling of recordings at Lutheran Archives
Special service orders and bulletins for special services (for example, installations, dedications and anniversaries)

Records Management Lifecycle

Records management

Records need to be stored securely. They must be protected from fire, damp, heat, light, insects and theft. They also need to be well-organised, and a list or database needs to be prepared of what records exist and their location.

Best practice means physical records are stored on the church site rather than the treasurer or secretary’s home. The same principle applies to electronic records.

How you manage and keep your records must also comply with privacy legislation and the LCA’s Privacy Policy, which protects an individual’s personal information. The LCA Privacy Policy can be found on the LCA Policies page.

Most congregations and parishes now use digital databases for managing and keeping records. There is a range of software available. See the Information Technology page on the LCA website for information about donated and discounted software.

Contact the LCA IT Services for further help and advice at service@lca.org.au

Records management tips

Name and date records, including the year. Label the records with the state, congregation name, place, and event or committee.
Ensure there are complete and signed minutes of all meetings.
Ensure the location of all vital records, such as constitutions, deeds and land titles, are known and recorded, especially if they are kept in bank safes or at your District Office.
Photographs must be identified and dated.

- Digital photographs: Use folders and subfolders to help sort these, such as a folder for each year or a subfolder for each event. Send a selection to Lutheran Archives along with identifying details.
- Printed photographs: Photocopy the photo and write the identification on the photocopy. Alternatively, write on the back with a soft pencil (4B or 6B).
Printed records can be more durable than electronic records. Print registers of vital records (such as baptisms), minutes and membership lists in addition to the electronic record.