For The Record

Submit birth, marriage and obituary records online.

Personal Ads

Meet new friends today!

Advertising

Put your message in front of 19,000 readers.

PDF documents on this site require the free Adobe Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

2008-12-16 issue:

Online registration soars for Columbus 2009

by Mennonite Church USA

Print Article

NEWTON, Kan.—More than 2,600 people registered for Mennonite Church USA Convention 2009 within 24 hours of the opening of online registration for next July’s event. It took a month for numbers to soar this high for Convention 2007.

Online registration opened at 8 a.m. EST on Dec. 1 at www.MennoniteUSA.org/convention. Paper registration will open Jan. 2, 2009. Online registration became an option for convention goers in 1999 and is now the most widely used method of registering for Mennonite Church USA conventions.

By 8:05 a.m. EST Dec. 1, 100 people had completed registration forms online. By 9 a.m. the same day, that number rose to 1,292, and the first hotel was sold out. Jorge Vallejos, director of convention planning for Mennonite Church USA Executive Leadership, is hesitant to say whether these early registrations are a useful benchmark for determining overall registration numbers.

“There’s still a long way to go, and there are still a lot of people who haven’t decided whether they’re coming to Columbus,” Vallejos said. “It’s just encouraging to see so many people who make registering early a priority.”