Auditing Church Membership

Verify existing/Collect new/Identify missing

Print Person Forms for entire church and distribute them to each person.
Print blank Person Forms for any new people.
Ask each person to verify their information and return the forms to the church clerk with any corrections or updates.
Keep the forms for any non-attending people.

The church clerk uses the returned Person Forms to update the existing membership records in eAdventist.
If you discover that a current member is somehow not included in your existing membership records, try to verify the membership one of the following ways:

Search previous church board minutes for record of the member’s baptism or transfer. If a baptism is found, add the member to your eAdventist membership records. If a transfer is found, contact your conference clerk to assist in recording the transfer in eAdventist retroactively.
Contact eAdventist team at help@eadventist.net for assistance in locating the member’s original record in another church. If located, request a transfer.
Ask member if they have their baptismal certificate. If they do, add them to your records in eAdventist. If the baptism occurred in your church, record it. Otherwise, ask your conference clerk to enter a “prior baptism”.

Shred any Person Forms after updates or additions are completed – to protect the personal information of your members.

If a new person has never been baptized, but attends frequently, add him/her to eAdventist as a nonmember.
If a new person is a member elsewhere and would like to join your church, request a transfer from the church holding their membership. If the member doesn’t know where their membership is, contact the eAdventist team at help@eadventist.net for assistance locating it.
If you are unable to locate the new person’s original membership, the church board may vote to accept the member on Profession of Faith.

The church clerk and church board should attempt to locate and contact non-attending members in any possible (e.g. email, phone, postal mail, family, friends). The Church Manual indicates that members should never be “dropped non-attendance.” However, you can use the “Involvement” field in eAdventist to identify non-attending members.
If a non-attending member wishes to be dropped from church membership, they can provide a written request to the church board. The church board will record a vote to “remove” their membership, as requested. The church clerk will change their status in eAdventist from Member to Removed.
If the church clerk and church board are unable to locate and contact a member, use a list or the “Involvement” field in eAdventist to indicate “unable to locate."
If the church clerk and church board have been unable to locate a member after 2 or more years, the board can vote the member as Missing. This simply means that the member is absent and does not mean that their membership has been withdrawn.