I answered a phone call from an irate elderly woman at the church where I work last week.
She was upset over having looked the church up in the Kenosha phone book, and instead of calling the church where she had attended however many years or decades ago, she got some child care institution somewhere. How was the church supposed to get new members if people couldn't find it in the phone book, she demanded to know.
I probably shouldn't have remarked that I hadn't seen a phone book in years.
The woman just got more upset on behalf of all the people everywhere who must rely on phone books because they don't have computers, and shouldn't I make sure that the information in the phone book is correct every year, and what kind of church did I come from, and so on and so forth, and maybe she should just call a Catholic church.
Which, after she finally got around to telling me why she wanted to call a church in the first place, she hung up and, presumably, did.
Backing up a little bit: I was on a council of representatives from the then sixteen ELCA Lutheran churches in town back in the early '90's, and we had tried to get those congregations to go in on a single Yellow Pages ad listing all of them. We had tried to convince the Yellow Pages not to have a separate listing of "Churches - Lutheran" apart from "Churches - Lutheran ELCA,"* "Churches - Lutheran Missouri Synod," and "Churches - Lutheran Wisconsin Synod." They also have just plain old "Churches." Our complaints fell on deaf ears; why would they want to sell one listing when they could sell two or three?
In those days, the Yellow Pages — and its rivals that came and went — were delivered free to every household, apartment, and office. If you had more than one phone on your land line, you'd get more than one phone book whether you wanted them or not. The Racine phone book, with both white page (alphabetical) and yellow page (by type of business) listings in it, was about an inch thick, 8.5"x11" newsprint paper, mostly tiny type.
Several years ago as residential land lines became more rare, the Yellow Pages went to publishing one book covering both Racine and Kenosha Counties, on smaller paper and fewer pages. If you want one, you have to order one; you don't get one just for having a phone. Many churches, with increasingly tight budgets, do not purchase ads in the Yellow Pages any more; why would they want to buy ads in a book that has been displaced by internet search engines on the phone in your pocket?
So yesterday, my better half and I were visiting my Dad, and I asked him if he had a phone book. He did, although it was four years old.
I looked up the church where I work, and the phone number was correct, in the white pages, and also in the yellow pages under both "Churches - Lutheran" and "Churches - Lutheran AELC." (A note to whomever is in charge at the Yellow Pages: the AELC joined with the ALC and LCA to form ELCA in 1987. It hasn't existed for over 35 years.)
The name of the church where I work is quite common among Protestant churches. That 2019 phone book listed like-named Lutheran churches in Kenosha, Racine, Twin Lakes, and Burlington, as well as some Baptist and non-denominational congregations.
I noticed that the listing immediately above that of the church where I work was for a day care operated by one of those other churches. I figure that my elderly caller had dialed their number by mistake.
I hope she had better luck calling a random Catholic church. And that she didn't dial St. Mary's Catholic Benevolence Society Insurance of Waupun instead.
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* ELCA = Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
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