The community where I grew up and where I live now, most everyone goes to the same church. There are a few exceptions but the majority of the entire community are members. Every five years, they take a family picture for each family and then publish them in a directory with addresses and phone numbers. I cannot tell you the last time I looked something up in the phone book, but I regularly consult the church book.
Who needs a phone book if you have a church book.
If one of the kids wants to go to a sleepover or has a new friend, I look up who their parents are and where they live. If I dig deep enough into old books, I can usually tell who their grandparents are as well. In our last church book, Eliza had not yet started school, and I didn’t realize the importance of the phone number in the back. I put down John’s number to let him handle all of the ‘church stuff’, not realizing that this number would be the ones that her friends would call. Lesson learned.
My kids, especially the older two would sit and look at the pictures all of the time. They would try to find their picture, their classmates, grandparents, and neighbors. Some of the books show wear and tear from being used so often. Such an odd thing. I often wonder if bigger churches do this too, or if it is a small town America thing. I know several people who collect church books from the surrounding communities, meaning not the church they attend to be able to trace families and figure out who people are.
With church books being updated every five years in our parish, they tell quite a story. You can see kids growing up before your eyes. It goes so quick, 3-5 pictures between being born and out of the house. And often by book number 5, those kids are starting their own families. I started thinking about my church book picture history… that’s totally a thing… right? And how much of my story can be told by looking at just the church book family pictures.
Life changes quickly…
These are the church book pictures I was able to locate, I may be missing a few but it’s better than nothing! I will have to go to my Grandma’s house to see the holy grail of church books.
2020. Time for a new picture.
2020 will be a different year for our picture. A year to document the dramatic changes that have happened. In the last picture, taken in 2015, Greta had not been born yet and John was alive. Our picture will look very different this year. But, it tells a story…. and this is part of our story, no matter how messy. Life is a series of photographs, make yours worth watching.
Update: November 2020
Since originally writing this post, so much has changed! We got our church book picture taken in February 2020 and have it back. Not our best performance by any stretch but a checkmark none the less.
Something interesting and super unique as far as church books go, they started taking pictures in February 2020, and in March 2020 most of the country was in quarantine due to Coronavirus. Church pictures were postponed until June and July. The families who had their pictures taken in June and July were wearing summer clothes and had some color on their skin. A stark contrast to our picture!
So tell me, does your community make a church book? I would love to see your family picture!
In the Blink of a Fly is led by Leah Fullenkamp. Leah is the mother of four young children. Their lives were tragically altered after a crash caused by distracted driving killed her husband and her children’s father. This website is the tale of them learning to live again and serves as a passion project to help prevent distracted driving and this tragedy from happening to someone else.
