Many of the records we keep in the Church have significance in the future. Baptisms are proof of citizenship in some places. Weddings are typically recorded at a court house, but that record may be corroborated by the Church wedding service. And of course we keep copies of bulletins that have been published.

The question soon comes up, “how long should we keep these old records around?” You could conclude that we should keep them until Jesus returns. That makes sense, but God is omniscient, so He doesn’t really need our records in the future. Or you could determine that you need to keep them for as long as they are our “legal” responsibility. I have been in court houses that had records dating back over a century. But most courts today require records going back to cover the statute of limitations. So perhaps a wise answer would be to keep records for 7 seven years, and then archive and destroy them.

Fortunately, we have the means to keep archival copies of records around in electronic form. Whether we have a 100 records, or a 1,000,000, they don’t occupy any more space. We just have to organize them, so they can be retrieved easily in the future. So perhaps a better question is, how can we organize our records and make them more accessible to the congregation?