What to do with those clearly not interested
Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 12:59 am
I live in a military ward in which we have nearly a complete turnover of membership ever three years or so. As such, a lot of time is spent trying to track down members who are clearly not active just to find out that they are clearly not interested in church activity.
I realize that we should always be making efforts to try and reactivate these people but quite frankly, they are a logistical nightmare. They move without telling anyone because they know no one and frankly don't want to know anyone in the church. They don't want the church to know their forwarding address.
Our ward is not offering them any support because they don't want any support. But yet, time, energy, and resources are periodically spend to try and track these people down and attempt reactivation (despite their repeated rejections of anything to do with the Church).
On one hand, you hear stories of miraculous reactivations. Obviously these are the exceptions. On the other hand, it is very inefficient to repeatedly, time and time again expend significant resources to track down one's new address only to find that they want nothing to do with the Church or for the next ward to begin the process all over again.
It seems to me to be a better, more efficient way to handle the membership records of these members. Any insights?
Is there any guidance from the handbooks? Should I send the records to the address unknown file? It seems weird to ask the person to recommend to people to have their names removed from the church records. All they want is to never be contacted again, not to do a bunch of paperwork in order to never be contacted again.
Anyway, any insights would be helpful.
I realize that we should always be making efforts to try and reactivate these people but quite frankly, they are a logistical nightmare. They move without telling anyone because they know no one and frankly don't want to know anyone in the church. They don't want the church to know their forwarding address.
Our ward is not offering them any support because they don't want any support. But yet, time, energy, and resources are periodically spend to try and track these people down and attempt reactivation (despite their repeated rejections of anything to do with the Church).
On one hand, you hear stories of miraculous reactivations. Obviously these are the exceptions. On the other hand, it is very inefficient to repeatedly, time and time again expend significant resources to track down one's new address only to find that they want nothing to do with the Church or for the next ward to begin the process all over again.
It seems to me to be a better, more efficient way to handle the membership records of these members. Any insights?
Is there any guidance from the handbooks? Should I send the records to the address unknown file? It seems weird to ask the person to recommend to people to have their names removed from the church records. All they want is to never be contacted again, not to do a bunch of paperwork in order to never be contacted again.
Anyway, any insights would be helpful.