Pathways
Pathways provides the structure and accountability you need for important internal processes.
Whether it’s visitor follow-up, new member education, personalized discipleship, or volunteer training, you can use Pathways to define and oversee the steps, activities, and outcomes of any process.
Applying Pathways to Track Training and Other Routine Processes
You could set up a pathway to help assimilate visitors. The steps might include being welcomed regularly at worship, offered membership in a group, and invited to events. Another pathway could prepare potential leaders by requiring training classes, mentoring, committee participation, and so on. All those places where people might fall through the cracks were made for pathways. Here are some more examples of potential pathways:
- Marriage Preparation
- Sacrament Preparation
- Teacher Training
- Preparation of Childcare Workers
- Membership Preparation
- Greeter or Usher Training
- Financial Counseling
- In-Depth Bible Studies
It's unlikely that participants will realize they're on a pathway. Instead, pathways are designed to energize and organize the efforts of your volunteers. To the people moving through a pathway, they'll just see your leadership is efficient and prepared, regardless of your church size. Users assigned the "View Pathways" permission can see where participants are in the process of completing their pathways. Whenever a series of tasks needs to be done by one or more volunteers, a pathway can help. Notification and accountability are built-in.*
Getting Started
A user with the Manage Pathways permission should set up your first pathway. Use the resources below to get started
- Online Help and printable PDF guides — Administrators and users with Manage Pathways permissions can make any changes needed to pathways. Pathway leaders and step leaders, on the other hand, can only make limited changes to the pathways or steps they lead. Therefore, this help section is divided in two: Staff and Leaders. If you have the Inform package, you can ignore the Leader guide if it is displayed. If you have Connect or Multiply, on the other hand, you might want to print or otherwise make the Leader guide available to pathway and step leaders to reference. these resources.
- Leader Guide (PDF) - For Connect & Multiply Customers
- Step Leader's Guide (PDF)
- Video Tutorials
- Online training resources. Log in to Realm, in the upper right corner, click the MinistrySmart™ icon. Next, search for "Pathways".
- Customer Success Story to share with your executive ministry team and leaders.
*Note
To take full advantage of pathways...
- Click . Enable at least the Manage group/pathway permission (if not all three) to allow pathway and step leaders to make the changes described there.
- When you appoint a pathway or step leader, make sure they enable notifications for the weekly or daily digest under Pathways. Admins cannot do this for them.
If the green icon in the lower-left corner is a "C", "M", or "O", your church uses one of these packages.