1.1 Introduction
An automated church membership records management system is an application software that is used to can enhance the services and the work flow of all activity that happens in a church. It helps in reducing the workload of the church staff, the number of man power needed and also make church management become more manageable and easier to control. Church membership records management is an area that nobody in the church thinks about; they simply expect that when they need access to a record, someone from the church will be able to find it. While individuals all wish records were that simple, the fact is that efficient management of records requires some thought and planning to make accessing them go smoothly. The records of the developments and decisions of your church, whether in traditional paper form or electronic, are important sources of information about its life. These records can include minutes of meetings, membership rolls, newsletters, annual reports, programs, etc, as well as photographs and recordings.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
Today, most of the records of congregations begin as digital files. Financial records and parish register may be kept in a database. Minutes, reports, newsletters, sermons, and other documents are created using word processing software. Correspondence is usually by e-mail. Much of the information an individual use and distribute to parishioners is created in formats to be read by a Web browser. Even the photographs of the church congregation’s activities are now in digital formats. These guidelines will address the ways in which an individual can assure future generations that these records will still be available for their use long after hardware, software, and file formats have changed. Records of church congregation can be created and maintained in order to have the information needed in the format that can be easily retrieved. Partners working in church congregation, today and in the future, can readily find the information. As individuals set about preserving information for future reference, plan for the entire life cycle of the records created.
Consistency is important in the care of records. Any records retention policy has validity, once accepted as the policy of the organization, only as it is uniformly practiced. It should be neither selectively implemented nor disregarded at the whim of the custodians of the records. Never purge records in the face of potential litigation. Information that is retained in hard copy or in electronic files is the property of the congregation. Such information is not the property of the pastor or of officers of the congregation to be removed, retained personally, or destroyed at will.
All staff members are custodians of the records they maintain. Most of the records retained by a congregation for its daily operation, legal protection, financial security, and responsibility to history fit into one of the following categories. For the well-being of the congregation, each type of record has a specific life cycle and needs appropriate care.
The challenges encountered that led to the execution of the research work is that, the manual system of record keeping and filling system in Nigerian churches has over the years proved inefficient. There had been incident of misplaced documents, not able to retrieve long consult patients’ records, loss of records or files, alteration of information etc, which mostly result in unnecessary delay of treatment and even sometime leads to the death of the patient. This problem persisted for a very long time and is worrisome to the church management.
1.3 Statement of Problem
Investigation revealed the problems involved in the existing Membership Record Management System which is stated as follows;
- A lot of churches manually maintain their records.
- Membership records when manually maintained makes it difficult to retrieve necessary information instantly pertaining to members of the church.
- The identity of the members of the church and their status in the church cannot be easily ascertained.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of the Study
The aim of the study is to design and implement an Automated Membership Record Management System. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows to develop an application software that will:
- Provide easy capturing of church membership record details.
- Ease church membership information accessible
- Record, Store and Manage church membership meetings records.
1.5 Significance of Study
The significance of the study is that it will provide the Apostolic Church with an automated system for managing membership record which will aid easy management of information concerning church members and aid accountability of membership, aid easy management of information concerning church members and aid accountability of membership, and finally it will ease the identification of members of the church.
This study will be of immense benefit to academic students other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.6 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Design and Implementation of an Automated Membership Record Management System using Apostolic Church in Ikot Ekpene district as a case study.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.8 Definition of Terms
Database: A systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated
Member: Somebody who belongs to and participates in a particular group by birth or choice
Management: The organizing and controlling of the affairs of a business or a sector of a business
