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Handbook for Evangel Presbytery Clerks

6 Organization of Records

Keeping church records well organized is one of the clerk’s most important duties. First of all, good organization helps ensure the accuracy of the records kept. In addition, the time you spend organizing records now will save you time hunting down records later when they are needed for reference.

6.1 Meeting Minutes

6.1.1 File Names

It’s important to be consistent with your files names. We suggest the following:

YYYY-MM-DD Church Name or Abbreviation Body and Meeting

So, for instance:

2022-02-03 TRC Session Meeting Minutes

or

2021-09-23 TRC Special Called Session Meeting Minutes

Using the date format YYYY-MM-DD at the beginning of your file name means that when your minutes files are sorted alphabetically, they will also be sorted chronologically.

6.1.2 Folder Structure

To organize your files on your computer, we suggest the following:

  • Meeting Minutes
    • Session Minutes
      • 2020
        • 2020-01-14 FPC Session Meeting Minutes
        • 2020-02-11 FPC Session Meeting Minutes
        • …
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Deacons Meeting Minutes
    • Congregational Meeting Minutes

To ensure that there is one and only one official version of any minutes, we discourage including temporary folders such as “Waiting for Session Approval” in the file structure listed above for the permanent record.

If you follow our guidelines for keeping minutes, then minutes which are in the process of being approved will be sent out by email. Everyone who had a part in the meeting will then have a time-stamped record of the minutes. Once final changes are made and minutes have been approved, however, they should be added to the permanent record.

6.1.3 Attachments

At times, attachments will need to be added to approved minutes. When added to the permanent record, those attachments should be included in the file containing the minutes and not left as a separate file.

6.2 Trial Records

The overall duties of a clerk of session regarding official church discipline are described in Church Discipline Records. As stated here, the clerk must ensure that there is a permanent, official record of the following:

  • the charges,
  • the answer,
  • the citations and responses to the citations, and
  • the minutes of the court proceedings

The minutes of a court proceeding should include:

  • the charges,
  • the answer,
  • all the testimony,
  • all such acts, orders, and decisions of the court relating to the case, as either party may desire, and
  • the judgment.

6.3 Other Important Documents

A clerk of session should work closely with a member of the church staff to organize and maintain the following additional documents:

6.4 Backups

Most minutes are kept digitally these days, so it’s important that you maintain backups of your important files. A good backup plan ensures that there are always three copies of your files at all times.

For instance:

  1. files are on your computer, and
  2. files are being synced regularly with a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, and
  3. files are being backed up regularly with a service like Backblaze.

For added security, you can also connect to a hard drive on your local network to run regular backups.