I've been helping at the Methodist church, sorting through old records. We started because someone asked about a membership from the 1890s. I found old cardboard boxes full of spiders and bugs. The critters are gone now, and we're sorting through the records.
Some we know obviously should be kept, such as all the old membership dates, etc. Also all the old council minutes.
We've got questions, however, about other stuff:
Do we need to keep receipts? saying so many sunday school books were purchased for x dollars?
Do we need to keep the records of how many were in the sunday school classes. These do NOT list the class members themselves, just that teacher A had 9 students; teacher B had 5, etc. The teachers are listed.
There are also records of who gave how much, such as in 1982, the weekly offering consisted of $25 from A; $30 from B; $53 from C, etc.
Thanks!
I would suggest that you do some research with the State Historical Society to find out what records should be kept. I honestly do not have any idea. Does the United Methodist Church have any policies about things like that? Is it something that needs to be decided by the current membership?