Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

In this digital age most of us take a lot of pictures. I'm amazed by how fast I can accumulate 1000 pictures on my phone. Most of the time I show them off on the phone itself, passing around particularly good images and inviting friends to scroll through. The pictures on my phone help me tell stories, especially to friends and colleagues with whom I do not share a strong common spoken language.

At church I've been rediscovering the joy of the printed snapshot. After years of rarely printing pictures, I have started ordering prints of all the pictures I take at church. I've become more intentional about documenting what we are up to, either by whipping out my phone and snapping a shot myself, or asking others to take pictures and reminding them to send them to me. Every month or so, I upload all my church pictures onto the app of a local drugstore chain, and order up a set of prints. With their constant discount offers, it rarely costs more than $10 for a good-sized stack of pictures.

Once we've got the pictures, we put them up all over the place. We have three bulletin boards full. I'm thinking about gradually wallpapering the parish hall.

Putting up pictures lets people know what goes on beyond what they see with their own eyes. They see people from the other Sunday services. They see weekday activities in our community gardens, band rehearsals, kids playing basketball in the parking lot, and neighbors decorating our outdoor prayer space with its image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

We use Facebook for pictures as well, but not everyone is on Facebook, and not everyone sees every post. There's nothing like wandering the church hallways and seeing pictures everywhere that represent the color and shape of our ministry. There's nothing like finding a picture of you or your kids or your grandma in the mix. There's nothing like realizing that the church has a whole life outside the time that you are usually here, that we are a 24-7 community and not just a Sunday morning place. For visitors and newcomers, pictures are a quick way to catch up on what our church is up to. The variety of images gives testament to our diversity and vitality. On slow days when attendance is down and the home crowd is discouraged, the pictures remind us of the bigger picture.

My next project is to invite people to send or bring pictures of the people for whom they would ask our prayers. That board will go in the sanctuary, putting faces to the names we read each week, and inviting us into prayer each time we pass it.

Are you intentional about taking pictures of your church being church? What do you do with those pictures? Might you want to include printed snapshots in your plan, as well as social media and web postings? Do you have a space that needs wallpapering? Can people who walk into your building get a sense of what you are up to, even if they come when most of the people aren't there?

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