One of my very first contributions to GAGenWeb was the transcription of an Antioch Church Sunday School Minute Book from Fayette County, GA covering the years 1846 - 1873.  It had been handed down through my family along with several original, hand written church letters of individuals.  Antioch’s records had been preserved, microfilmed and donated to the Georgia Archives but this book covers an important time period and was never held by the church. 

Within a short time after it went online, I began getting emails thanking me for sharing it - one person discoverd the last name of a bride they had not been able to uncover from other sources, another found the exact month and year their ancestors left Georgia for Texas and another found the full name of a female ancestor. 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/church/antioch.htm

I realized then how important the church records are to our research & heritage.  I have put this list together of places I have used in building the Church pages on my websites over the years and I hope they will give you ideas for building yours.  Hopefully some of you will have other knowledge to share with us regarding this important resource. 

1 - Run a GNIS query for Churches & Cemeteries in your county.

http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/

2 - Search the internet for variations of county, city, church, denomination - pull current church information regarding location and contact information. Link to their website if available and take a look at the website, I have found quite a few with extensive history online and older photographs.  I like to use Google so that I can use the Advanced Features and narrow down the information even further.

3 - Local history books - a good source for lists of historic churches that may or may not still be in existence or may now be located in another county. Also a possible source of dates for organization, building dates and early members. 

4 - Search Georgia’s Virtual Vault - Early Legislation - for your county and/or town names to see if you can pull up early incorporation information.  Is also a good source for early school names. The search results include enough information to fairly quickly scan through and pull up the documents that would apply.

http://content.sos.state.ga.us/cdm4/legdocs.php
http://neptune3.galib.uga.edu/ssp/cgi-bin/ftaccess.cgi?_id=7f000001&dbs=ZLGL
5 - Link your churches to any cemetery surveys available online - either on your website, another site or in the archives.

6 - Search the LDS Catalog to see what church records have been microfilmed by them for your county and list it on the site with each church name.

http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

7 - Georgia Baptist Records - Jack Tarver Library @ Mercer University
http://tarver.mercer.edu/
http://tarver.mercer.edu/archives/sc.php
Every time I visit their website, I find more information!

8 - Georgia Methodist Records - Pitt Theology Library @ Emory University (mostly North Georgia Conference, but there are links to other resources)

http://www.pitts.emory.edu/collections/archives_ngca.cfm

9 - Search the archives of your county mailing list for church or churches.  Many of these contain information ranging from a name you haven’t found in other places or locations you haven’t been able to find to actual records people posted years ago that were never pulled onto a county site or into the archives for your county. 

Some of the payback I have received for building my church pages up as an important resource is truly amazing!  I was contacted a few years ago by a pastor of a church I had listed but had little information on and asked if I could post a notice on the page about their upcoming 100th year celebration.  I replied that I would be glad to and asked him if he had any historical information regarding the church and he sent back several paragraphs that filled in this church’s history.

On a county mailing list (not one of my counties), I saw a man post something about some Baptist Association minutes he had.  I wrote to him and found out that he had received 3 pamphlets published by the Flint River and Towaliga Baptist Associations that a friend had found at a sale and sent to him.  He had not transcribed them but had scanned copies that he furnished to me and I transcribed them.  They had important information on extinct churches in several counties -
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/church/1827flintriv.htm
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/church/towaliga1847.htm
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/church/towaliga1848.htm

After transcribing those records, I wrote to the Flint River Baptist Association asking about a church that was mentioned in these minutes and a couple of other places I had seen but couldn’t find any other records of or a location and they replied with quite a bit of information on several churches that I added to the site also.

My most recent payback has been the donation of over 10 years of research by a church historian to my Fayette County site.  The church members had collected biographies of families, church history, records and local history preparing to publish a church history and then decided not to publish it. 

If you go to my website and the church page located here:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/church/churches.htm
Scroll down to Inman United Methodist Church and you will see links to part of the information donated.
In addition, they provided a complete transcription of the 1863 census for the county:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/census/1863.htm
and over 30 family biographies that I am still working on getting online:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~gafayett/biography/bios.htm

The person who sent this in told me she had also donated it to Genealogy.com but she wanted to assure that it would always be available free which is why she was sending it to me.

Sometimes we assume that everyone knows about their County Mailing List (many of them are through Rootsweb), but I wanted to speak about how helpful the County List can be for letting everyone  know about your pages, your work, as well as be a valuable resource for researchers in the county itself.

I’ve always found that most people don’t really know that we want people to contribute their data.  Sure we say this on our pages, but so often, people are timid and don’t think this means them.  They may think their family really isn’t of interest to others — when in fact, everyone’s family helped to shape the county in one way or another.

I also make a point of joining the GEORGIA@rootsweb.com list.  Sometimes it is very, very slow — other times it is quite active.  The more CCs that would become active on this list, the more people would be aware of the work GAGenWeb actually does.  By attempting to help someone with answers on the Georgia list, you can also refer them to some of our helpful GAGenWeb pages.

I’ve also been asked about "who is the manager" of a County List.  This varies, and I would say the majority are not members of GAGenWeb. In the early days, almost every manager had a county in GAGenWeb.    However, regardless of who is manager of the List itself, I’ve always found that anyone who attempts to help out on the List, will quickly be viewed as someone who will take the time to answer and direct people to places to search. Your  posts generally lead to people showing more interest in your own County pages.

I’d be interested in knowing how others make use of their County Lists.