The Falls Church Parishioner Realm and membership update
The Falls Church is a vibrant parish which has grown exponentially in the years since its return to the building. One challenge of the quick growth, and of a large amount of staff turnover, is that our records are often out of date, not complete or lost completely. We have both paper records of membership, and digital records on our parish database, Realm. We will continue to keep both, however Realm is the avenue we use most often to locate and contact members, and to share news and updates, so keeping parishioners' information up to date is essential.
In an attempt to remedy the situation we are launching a ‘Realm and membership update’ campaign, with the hopes of collecting information on all current worshippers and members of the parish that is up to date and relevant.
On a basic level, capturing this information helps us to know just how many members and worshippers we have. But it also helps us to have details such as whether a person has been baptized, and/or confirmed and this information directly relates to the number of delegates we are allowed at the Diocese of Virginia convention. Currently we have one per the amount of people we have officially listed as confirmed, but suspect we may be allowed another and possibly more.
As well as information, we would also love to have an up-to-date photo of all members, including and particularly children, a word from Lauren on why this is important:
Updated children's photos are an important part of our safety protocols at The Falls Church. These photos help us have a current picture of your child(ren). Current photos ensure that if a child were to go missing, our security team would have an accurate description of your child(ren). Thank you.
You can email a photo along with the form, or upload one yourself if you have a Realm log in. We will also be hosting a photo booth one Sunday in September to take photos of those who do not have them or who are unable to upload or provide a digital photo.
We would love for everyone to fill out THIS FORM for their household, it has room for 2 adults and 3 children, if you have more than 3, please fill out the child sections of a second form and submit both together, and return it printed and filled in to the office, or digitally filled in (it’s a fillable PDF) to ebangay@thefallschurch.org ASAP but ultimately by September 1st. We will also have copies to pick up at church if you do not have the ability to print or fill in digitally.
A final word on Realm: not all of our parishioners actively use Realm - it is possible to be a member and listed on Realm, and to not have a ‘log in’ - and this is ok, as we are aware not everyone is comfortable with online platforms, etc. If however you do not have a log in but would like to use Realm to update your own profile, and to see notices and posts from other parishioners, the form has a question which will allow you to note this, and an invitation will be emailed to you. Those parishioners who do have access to their Realm profile, I’d like to encourage to review their settings, specifically their notification settings (which you can access by logging in and clicking the arrow next to your name in the top right, and selecting ‘notification settings’ from the drop down) to make sure they reflect your feelings on receiving email updates and contact from other parishioners.
I realize this is a lot of information and may result in many questions and requests for help. I am more than happy to help anyone who needs it, via email, phone call, video call or even a visit to the office, please just let me know.
Thank you in advance for your help,
Ellie and the staff of The Falls Church
