(Note: the blue horizontal menu bar directly above lists the subsections of "Getting Started." Be sure to read each of these subsections before moving on to the next primary section, "Defining a Lutheran Congregation.")

Getting Started: Finding Resources

As you begin your inquiry, take an inventory of all the resources available. As you proceed, you will find that some things are missing. For some reason, the bulletins from 1918 are missing. A pastor's files are in his family's possession. Someone threw away the women's organization minutes.

Keep track of what you have and what is absent. Then develop a systematic plan to recover what you can. Assign individual team members specific tasks: seek copies of the women's organization minutes from the group's officers; pay a visit to the Lundquist family to secure access to the pastoral files; compare the bulletins from 1917 and 1919 to determine if you need the 1918 set or can do without them.

You will meet dead ends. Some materials never turn up. Then historians need to invent ways to find what they are seeking. If no minutes for an organization can be found, then oral histories of key members might be the only avenue available. Sometimes the historian must accept defeat, too. We never can recover the whole past. Instead, historians work with the fragments they can find, and admit that the story they construct is partial, at best.

It is important to turn outside the congregation for help as you assemble materials. Denominational archives—on the local, regional, and national levels—likely have saved official reports from your congregation and information on its clergy. Your denomination's historians and archivists are key resources for learning about parts of your congregational story that intersect with larger denominational developments. (See the "Resources" section for information on how to contact these people.)

As you develop the congregational conversation mentioned above, be sure to include times when members can bring materials they might have saved. And do not forget about former members and clergy who can help with the task. In addition, local community historical societies, newspapers, and libraries are often able to provide valuable glimpses of the congregation from the outside.

As you proceed, the inventory will inevitably grow. The diaries of longtime members, the sermons of pastors, the minutes of the youth group, and scrapbooks of pictures, all of these add dimensions to the story you seek to tell.