Church subscription drive part of reactivation effort
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Ashley Archer just couldn't help but smile.
Membership clerk in the Victoria 1st Ward, Victoria British Columbia Stake, Brother Archer had just finished shaking the hands of dozens of less-active members who had attended a member meeting July 31 during which President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke. Of the 202 less-active members of the ward who were personally invited to attend, at least 32 were present. (Please see Aug. 8, 1998, Church News for reports on President Hinckley's visit to British Columbia.)"We've been working hard in the last year to contact people," he told the Church News soon after President Hinckley had left the sports arena where the meeting was held. He said he had talked to the less-active who had come and their response to the Church president's visit was "wonderful. They had tears in their eyes."
The success of the evening is by no means a culmination of the ward's efforts to reach out to less-active members. It's simply a continuation. For some time, stake Pres. Jackson Ellis and his counselors, Grant Gainor and Brent Herrington, have been encouraging reactivation projects. In fact, the stake goal is to increase from 1,200 active members to 2,000 by the year 2000. The Victoria 1st Ward has been following their counsel. During the past year, Brother Archer and activities chairwoman Eileen Bevan, under direction of Bishop Lorne Merrett, have been coordinating a reactivation project that has included a Church publication subscription drive. In the first few months of the project, some 18 less-active members signed up for subscriptions.
Then, last spring, stake Pres. Ellis announced that President Hinckley was coming. He and his counselors encouraged members to invite less-active members to the member meeting. Doors of the less-active in the 1st Ward were once again approached.
One recently activated member, Cassandra Henderson of the Victoria 1st Ward, who attended President Hinckley's member meeting, feels strongly about reaching out to less-active members. "Sometimes all they need is for someone to say, `Come with me.' If that happened to me five years ago, if someone knocked on my door and said, `The prophet is coming,' I would have said yes."
Pres. Ellis and his counselors hope that many will now say "yes" to Church activity.
