(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: A Community of Inquirers

Thus, your task becomes not just more manageable but more productive as group members complement each other and enrich each other's work. Whether or not your group organizes itself as a formal committee, it's important that you form a community of inquirers—and that a congregation-wide conversation begins and continues as people share discoveries, raise questions, fit pieces of information into larger patterns, and together probe for the deeper significance of what they are learning. Meetings of your congregational history team can become places where people reflect in open, candid, and prayerful ways about your congregation's life, mission, and purpose.

As your committee begins to work, make tentative plans for your final product. Do you want to write a book? Make a video? Hold a celebration? Later sections ("Constructing the Story" and "Telling the Story") will help you make these decisions. You might change these plans as your research progresses.

But from the outset, your team should be thinking of ways to keep staff and leaders who are not team members informed, and to involve the congregation in the process of discovery. Prepare interim reports to present to interested groups or committees. Write newsletter articles about what has been discovered and what needs to be learned. Hold occasional history or heritage festivals to show off treasures from the archives. Videotape and show interviews with the congregation's living legends and tradition bearers. Set up displays of photos and other information gathered.

These are all ways the congregation can learn about its history long before a final product is complete. The challenge here is to create an interest in the congregation and to help all the members feel that the discovery and inquiry are theirs.

Because the task of discovering your congregation's history will require hard work, keeping the committee or team's morale high is also important. You might want to plan joint visits to important sites, special visits by resource people to meet with the group as a whole, and times when people can enjoy an extended conversation about what they are learning. An initial planning retreat—in which you establish the congregation's time line, clarify the kind of history to be written, and come to an agreement about division of labor and deadlines—can help create your community of inquiry.