How To Use Your Church Directory

We have an updated church membership directory available for all of our members. If you have picked one up you will notice there is nothing fancy about it. This is (intentionally) not an expensive high-cost booklet designed to impress (although it is clean and put together well). That’s because we want it updated regularly so it is accurate and easy to re-print. Like everything we do at Fellowship Baptist Church, the directory has some very specific pastoral purposes behind it. I want to share three of those purposes with you in this article.

1. Know your church

The directory is, as stated, a membership directory. We do not list regular attenders (although we love and are thankful for our regular attenders). We do not list every single guest that has ever walked through our doors (we are thankful for them too). No, the directory will help you put a face to the families that have covenanted with our church by believing the gospel, submitting to baptism, and devoting themselves to be numbered among the members of this body. Why do we do this? It is because you need to know who you have covenanted with in order to be faithful to them. We want to be crystal clear when it comes to those we have added to the church, so we have a public list. To affirm a membership is to affirm someone’s Christian faith. That is not to say that we think all of our guests are lost (I know many of them in fact are not lost). But it is to say the congregation has not acted to name them as “Christian,” which is what we are doing when we accept a transfer or baptize someone in water. I personally know some of these regulars are Christian, but Fellowship has not yet vouched for their testimony of following Jesus (and if you are one of those reading this now, I hope we can soon!) You need to know who makes up FBC, and the directory has been made to help you do that. Read through it and familiarize yourself with the people. And if you have not given us a picture yet now you know why it is important that you do!

2. Communicate with Your Church

Our listings are meant to have means of communication - addresses, phone number and emails. This provides you a way to keep in touch (or meet) other members of this body that you go to church with. Call others. Text them. Encourage them. Invite people over. Send cards. Some of the most encouraging interactions I have ever had with members are those that send cards. There are a couple of families in our church right now that have sent me and my family many cards since we have arrived here, and it is difficult to put into words just how much those mean to us. Use the directory to communicate with others. Building up the body of Christ can mean praying with someone in person, or sitting beside them in a service. But it can also happen in a phone call or card.

3. Pray for Your Church

This is the primary way I am using our directory right now. You will notice there is lots of room to write in the directory. Utilize this by putting down ways you can pray for specific people. Come to connection group and take notes. Attend the prayer ministry meetings and record burdens. Listen to when the pastors mention pressing needs from the pulpit. Write it down, and talk about it to God. You can pray for your church family without a directory, but you can pray for them more thoroughly and make sure no one falls through the cracks if you use the directory.