Death of Church
When a church dies, it should not be deleted from the system, but instead the 'alive' field should be unchecked. When the 'alive' field is unchecked, the system may automatically display extra fields that ask for the reason of death and/or the year of death.
When a church is no longer alive, it will also no longer show up in search results (unless specifically asked for under Advanced Search), neither will it show on the maps, graphs, reports or mailing labels. However, the membership data will still be used for historical reports and research, so it is important not to delete the church with all data altogether.
In some cases there may be reasons why a church should be deleted; for example when there is a duplicate record of the same church in the database. The delete button is used to remove the church from the database, including historical membership data. This feature should be used with caution and is typically only available to the national coordinator or administrator. A deleted church and all associated data cannot be retrieved once it has been deleted.