• Categorizing your people based on how involved they are at the church can be automated using an automated routine and Participant Engagement field.
• Most churches have rules that relate to how a person is engaged or involved in the church, but their rules generally cover new people or members. Our goal is to have a comprehensive categorization process. Since most churches have unique terminology and rules, it is best practice not to copy another church's process entirely.
• A church might want to implement this for any of the following reasons:
  • Understand how people are involved.
  • Help people to become more involved.
  • Identify people who have become less involved.
  • Communicate with people strategically based upon their involvement.
  • Clean up their database and figure out just who is Active at the church.
• An Engagement Tracking Routine generally has the following:
  • Rules defined by the church 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/current segment for each person.
  • A view that shows 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 the Platform. Values can be customized by a SPoC in Lookup Values > Participant Types.

Participant/Member Engagement

Here are Participant Engagement values as they display in the Platform under Lookup Values > Participant Engagement. These values cannot be customized, but the rules for these can be set differently for each church. See Participant Engagement Routine for specific criteria for each Engagement value.

Getting Started

Many churches have developed detailed processes for how a person's Participant Types and Engagements are reflected in the Platform. Once a church has specific criteria for what moves them from a Guest to a Member (Participant Type) or from being Fully Engaged to Lapsing (Participant Engagement), Professional Services can help automate these changes. The criteria for Participant Types and Engagements should be clearly defined and should align with your church's culture and values.