Prevention really is the best medicine when it comes to keeping people connected.  How can you prevent persons from becoming so disconnected that you don’t even have an accurate address or telephone number?  Use the following suggestions to develop your own ideas for preventing the need to clean up rolls.

1. Assign every church member to a Sunday School class (or other ongoing Bible study group). 
2. Avoid assuming classes or groups are staying connected.  Use your records to flag people who have missed two consecutive weeks.  Consider generating reports that ask classes or groups to fill in how they contacted those persons.
3. Use care groups or teams in adult classes as the primary means of ministry.  Coordinate with other age group leaders to share the ministry load.  Adult classes should coordinate outreach and ministry with preschool, children, and youth leaders to avoid duplication of efforts and better use all available resources.
4. Include in-service/associate members in adult care groups or teams.  Recognize leaders in other age groups often slip between the cracks after they give up leadership roles in another age group.  If they are not connected with adult classes as they serve, they most often do not connect again when they can attend an adult bible study group.  In addition, they need ministry and fellowship with adults their own age or life stage as they serve.
5. Plan quarterly, personal connections with every class and department.  For example, the second Sunday of each quarter, SS classes and departments could hand deliver learner guides to those persons who missed the first Sunday.
6. Include SS and church members in regular mail outs including the request for forwarding and address corrections.  This insures you obtain correct addresses when people move if they leave a forwarding address.
7. Use email as one way to keep people plugged in with prayer requests and praises.  Make it a habit to obtain email addresses for new church and small group members.  Weekly emails of the prayer praises and requests will also notify you of email address changes.  Consider investigating the group management component of mybiblestudy.com to share not only prayer concerns, but to remind group leaders and teachers of birthdays, anniversaries, and other life events.
8. Don’t miss the family connection.  Everyone wants to have a healthy, strong family.  Coordinate your connecting strategies with other age group leaders.  Focus on helping parents build strong families and marriages.  Some people may reconnect because of something happening in their family (empty nest, death of parents/spouse, marriage or divorce, etc.).
9. Build a reputation in your community for the church who cares.  Plan at least four servant evangelism activities in your community each year.  Design “care cards” to leave when ministering throughout your community.  Use the cards so people are constantly hearing or bumping into someone or something that shows them your church is serious about impacting the community around them.  Your church will draw inactive as well as newcomers to your church family. Click here to discover more intentional ways of connecting with unchurched persons in your community.
10. Devise a ministry plan for meeting needs as you discover them.  Recognize ministry windows are not open very long and when they close, they may close tighter than before.
11. Evaluate your church-wide system for caring for members and prospects.  Sometimes there are multiple groups with caring responsibilities, and this may cause someone to fall between the cracks because one person/group thinks another will pick up the ball.  For example, a SS class may think the deacon will provide ministry or the choir, or the women on mission group—when in fact no one is ministering because each thinks the other is doing so.

Regardless of the strategies you develop and implement, focus on preventing persons from disconnecting in the first place.  It is much easier to prevent people from disconnecting than to try to reconnect.

If you found this article useful, you may be interested in "Reconnecting Inactive Members".