We have made a few changes over the past few months here at the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald.

One of those changes is that I am now responsible for the church news that we feature in our newspaper on Thursday and Saturday. I couldn’t really call it a new assignment for me because I was also responsible for that information during my first stint here in the mid-1990s.

I always found church people a pleasure to deal with and I am pleased to report that is still the case.

My only drawback is that I deal with the same people over and over. I enjoy the folks who take their time to regularly submit notices of special church services which we run in the newspaper on Thursdays. They are good people and dedicated to getting the information for their services out to the community and I appreciate them very much.

I know, however, there are many other churches in Bertie, Hertford and Northampton counties that would love to have the public aware of their special services as well. It is those people who haven’t used this newspaper for that forum that I would like to hear from. We would love to have church news from any church in those counties.

A slight change on the church page is that we are now following, to the best of my ability, Associated Press Style guidelines. Part of that is the services (or any other event we promote) should be in a certain order – specifically time before date before place. In other words, Revival services are scheduled at 7 p.m. Sunday, January 4, 2009 at Congregation Baptist Church.

Also, as much as I’m sure many of you would like to invite people to “a life-changing Holy Ghost revival” that is simply not how we are charged to print those items. We will inform the public that the First St. Luke Overcoming Church of God in Christ is holding revival services and who will be speaking there.

Likewise, “Brother” or “Sister” is a perfectly acceptable denotation in church, but is not a proper title and therefore won’t be used. I will use “The Reverend” or “Bishop” or “Pastor” or “Deacon” as these are proper titles.

Our deadline for church news for Thursday’s special services is 5 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. I believe I am extending it a few hours beyond what it was in the past, but I generally don’t work on it until Thursday morning, so I feel comfortable doing that.

One note about Thursday’s Church Page is that we will ONLY print special services. If you are having a regular service, that goes in our Saturday edition and will not be printed on Thursday. We made a change several months ago to separate those two and provide more service to our church-going readers.

We will do our absolute best to get in as much church news as we can each week. Preference obviously will go to the events that are happening in the coming week, but if you turn it in ahead of time, we will run it more than once.

I would also like to have more churches listed on our Saturday church page which features regular services. If your church is not listed, simply drop me an email or fax or come by the office with that information.

Likewise, if your services are listed, try to help us keep them up to date. If things change, let me know.

If your church has not been featured as the Neighborhood Church on Saturday, I’ll be glad to use it if you send me a photo. I have been taking photos of churches at random, but would love to have someone provide their church photo if they want to see it on that page.

I look forward to continue working with those of you who regularly contribute to our church page and to getting to know the people who will begin.

Thadd White is Sports Editor and Staff Writer for the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. He can be reached via email at thadd.white@r-cnews.com or by telephone at 332-7211.