Engagement Tracking Routines

Categorize people based on how involved they are at the church using an engagement tracking routine and the Participant Engagement field.

Most churches have rules about how a person engages with or is involved in the church, but these rules generally only cover new people or members. With an engagement tracking routine, the goal is to have a comprehensive categorization process. Since most churches have unique terms and rules, it is a best practice to not completely copy another church's process.

You might use an engagement tracking routine for any of the following reasons:

• To understand how people are involved.
• To help people to become more involved.
• To identify people who have become less involved.
• To communicate with people strategically based upon their involvement.
• To clean up your database and learn who is active at the church.

Engagement tracking routines generally have the following:

• Church-defined rules that categorize records by engagement. We recommend using Member Status for membership or member-related rules. We recommend using Participant/Member Engagements for the movement categories.
• A routine we created that runs nightly or weekly to log the new or current segment for each person.
• A view that tells someone at the church how a participant is doing related to your specific rules. During this process, the church might initiate care, follow-up, or other communication with people who are moving.

Participant/Member Types

Here are some example participant types as they display in MinistryPlatform. SPoCs can customize values in Lookup Values > Participant Types or Member Types.

Participant/Member Engagement

Here are participant engagement values as they display in MinistryPlatform under System Lookups > Participant Engagement. You cannot customize these values, but you can set the rules differently for each church. See Participant Engagement Routine for specific criteria for each engagement value.

Getting Started

MinistryPlatform is flexible, and there are several different ways to approach a topic. You can change the functionality and ideas to fit your ministry needs.

Many churches created clear processes for how participant types and engagement levels display in MinistryPlatform. Once your church defines what moves someone from a guest to a member, or from fully engaged to lapsing, Professional Services can help automate those updates. Be sure your criteria for participant types and engagement levels are clearly defined and align with your church's culture and values.