Case Study: Managing pastoral care

About the author...

Paul and his wife Fiona used to lead a Vineyard church in Bournemouth, UK. Paul now heads up customer support and training at ChurchSuite. In this article, he explores how ChurchSuite's features can help churches manage aspects of pastoral care.

Introduction

Several features within ChurchSuite can help churches organise and manage a pastoral care ministry more effectively, from managing a team and appointment bookings to subsequent follow-up, and ensuring the confidentiality needed when pastoral care is provided. Let's begin by exploring some of the features available in ChurchSuite, most of which can be accessed through the Address Book module.

Create a pastoral care team User Group

It may be helpful to group your pastoral care team Users in a User Group. Access to many features in ChurchSuite, such as Flows, Notes and Tags (and Resources in the Bookings module - see later), can be optionally restricted to your "Pastoral Team" User Group members. This will be especially helpful where elements of your pastoral care processes are sensitive, such as a Note added after a pastoral appointment, and you want to ensure that the added note is private to just the pastoral care team members. 'User groups' ensure private content remains private.

A feature of User Groups is being able to assign a shared email address to the group so that when sending emails to people, the pastoral team user group members can send their messages from the group's shared email address rather than from their user or personal email address; which is ideal where a more professional or consistent communication is desired, and where you wish to receive email replies to a 'restricted access' pastoral care mailbox.

With this in mind, setting up a designated pastoral care mailbox on your email server may be helpful, allowing replies to the user group's shared email address to be received in a managed inbox. You can even create email routing rules to further forward replies to designated pastoral care team member email addresses.

Use Flows to manage appointments and follow-up

Flows transformed my church's administration processes! If you're not familiar, Flows enable you to break repetitive admin processes into stages, representing each part of the process. Each stage has one or more actions defined that can be optionally run for each person when their stage actions become due. For more information about Flows, refer to the related support article.

As we consider pastoral care, a notable feature of Flows is the timely sending of reminder notifications when tasks are due. Ideal for helping your pastoral team keep organised and ensuring things don't fall through the gaps of a busy church office or a Flow Manager's busy to-do list. Designated pastoral Flow Managers can receive a weekly digest of the status of their Flow, including tasks that are due and overdue, while team members receive daily reminders of their specific due and overdue tasks. Importantly, the reminders continue until either the task is completed, postponed, or the person is reassigned to another user.

Flows are a feature of the Address Book module, so they can only be accessed by module Users. This means that those responsible for managing a pastoral care Flow and those who will process people through the Flow when tasks become due will need to have at least "Use" permissions for the Address Book. With "use" permissions, users can add Notes, add people to existing Flows, process people through Flows (including running all Flow actions), send emails and produce reports. However, users will need at least "Write" permissions if their role also requires them to modify people's details in the Address Book.

Helpfully, rather than starting from scratch, ChurchSuite includes several example Flows, including a "Pastoral Visits" Flow that you can install (available in the Flows section of the module). The example below is a simple two-stage process Flow that comprises one stage for scheduling a pastoral visit and a second stage for the pastoral meeting itself. You can, of course, further customise the Flow by adding extra stages or steps that represent your process. You'll also want to edit the Stage settings to reflect your preferred times when the two stages typically become due. It's this setting that determines the due date for each person when they are first added to the Flow and the due date applied for each subsequent stage. Due dates can be easily postponed without running the actions, and users can also delegate flow assignments to another user, perhaps if they are unavailable.

Adding people to a flow

Adding people to a pastoral visit Flow is easy. From a person's profile page in the Address Book, select Add to flow from the Engagement tab:

On the Add to flow pop-up, select Pastoral Visits Flow from the drop-down list, select the stage to add them to (in this context, the first stage) and click Save to complete the process.

The added person will remain Pending in the first stage of the Flow until their 'scheduled visit' Due date.

Processing people through flows when tasks become due

When tasks become due, clicking Process opens the Process pop-up (see screenshot below), which has two tabs Actions (the default) and Details. From the Actions tab, you can optionally change the Due date, postpone the task, or change the Assigned user if it is being delegated to another user. Helpful user Instructions can provide a basic explanation of what needs to be done and the Actions that can be taken when the instructions have been completed.

The Details tab shows basic contact details and the notes history. New notes can be added here as well, such as notes from a telephone conversation or any follow-up actions required. For confidentiality, Notes added here inherit the same visibility restrictions as the Flow itself, meaning that if the Flow is only visible to your pastoral care team user group, any notes added will also be restricted to the same group.

Pastoral care team communications

It's possible to hide 'sent' emails to prevent them from showing in the Communication logs on people's profile pages and in the Communication report. This may be helpful where you wish to hide potentially private or sensitive emails. Note the Hide email action in the Address Book module's Communication report. Hidden emails cannot be made visible again - all record of the sent email is hidden from your ChurchSuite account.

Good notes and bad notes!

We should always speak of others with the same love, dignity, and respect that we would expect to receive ourselves. This is true when adding notes against people in ChurchSuite. Factual notes from a meeting, things to remember, and action points for follow-up are all useful tools in a busy church when working collaboratively in teams. With these helpful notes, things are less likely to be forgotten.

Where personal information has been shared with us, perhaps during a pastoral conversation, we should consider whether that information is intended solely for our use or whether the person would be happy for us to share a note of that information with a wider audience, such as other pastoral care team members or other users. In my experience, most notes we add about people are harmless - e.g., "Met John for coffee today. He's asked for information about small groups." I might set this note's visibility to "Just me", as a personal reminder for follow-up, or perhaps to a "small group ministry" user group, so that it can be actioned by one of the team. However, before adding notes with confidential content, consideration should be given to the purpose and necessity. Only then should the information be recorded with the person's consent, and visibility should be restricted to the appropriate audience, such as the Pastoral Care Team user group we explored earlier.

Notes expressing "opinions" should typically be avoided. A note such as, "I thought John looked a little scruffy on Sunday - perhaps he's not taking care of himself since his wife passed away"; while these remarks might be a true opinion, I would argue it is probably not appropriate and would no doubt cause unintended hurt if ever read by John. However, "Saw John on Sunday - must drop him a line to check that he's doing OK since his wife passed away" is considerably more sensitive and appropriate. Please note that, under the UK Data Protection Act, data subjects are entitled to request a copy of all personal data held about them, which will include any notes that all users have added about that individual in ChurchSuite.

One final thought on notes. I have found it good practice to periodically remove old notes that are no longer relevant. People change, their circumstances change, and people move on pastorally and spiritually. What was relevant in a note two years ago may no longer be relevant today and could even be misleading if read now. The Address Book module's Notes report allows you to filter notes by date range, author/user, and user group visibility, and then easily delete them in one process.

Creating a pastoral care Flow

Before creating a 'Pastoral Care' Flow, you should first map out your current administrative and care processes on paper. In what order do things happen? Who does what? Within what timeframe do you ideally expect or aim for things to happen at each stage of the process? Are there elements of the process that might be further broken down into more detail or combined into fewer stages? Is there any part of the process that can happen simultaneously, or is the process quite linear and conditional upon a previous part of the process? Are there bottlenecks or gaps in the current processes that need to be addressed first?

Answers to these types of 'process' questions - or at least an awareness of them - will better set you up for a win and a well-designed Flow. To say, from experience, I often found my "preferred" timeframes between each stage of a process were usually vastly underestimated - things always took longer than I expected; people can be busy or unavailable, I was busy, and other things fell into the schedule - and so I found it helpful to build in margin and flexibility into each stage in a pastoral care Flow, rather than my Flow feeling like a "sausage machine" that needed to keep churning out sausages! I also found that sometimes people don't (or can't) follow a linear process from stage 1 to stage 2 to stage 3, and so on. Sometimes, Flow stages may need to contain more than one navigation action, so that your team members/users have a choice of where people are processed to in the Flow next, perhaps moving back a stage or skipping a stage entirely.

Avoid the monster Flow!

All of the above is to say, avoid the monster Flow! You'll know the one I mean - the one that attempts to do "everything" in a single Flow, with dozens of stages and actions. It's a recipe for frustration! Honestly, less is more. Flows will serve you and your users better if they are shorter and simpler. Break down more complex pastoral care workflows into smaller, bite-sized chunks. For example, if the process leading up to a prayer ministry appointment involves the completion of forms, booking appointments, sending confirmation emails, assigning ministry team members, etc. - could those processes be broken down into 3 or 4 separate Flows, each with 1 to 3 stages max., rather than one unwieldy Flow? There are advantages to using multiple Flows: a person can be at different stages in more than one Flow simultaneously, and some things can happen concurrently, rather than experiencing bottlenecks and delays in providing pastoral care through a single Flow process. A further advantage is that parts of the task can be delegated to others (Flow Managers), meaning Flows are not dependent on one individual for smooth operation.

Key Dates

I think Key Dates are often underutilised, with many churches not appreciating their full potential. Typically, they are used to note the date someone first joins or leaves a church, perhaps the date they get married or baptised, but not much else in between. Key Dates can be used for so much more!

Key Dates are essentially any significant discipleship milestones - anything bound by a date, such as the date someone joins or leaves a small group or ministry, the date they attend a significant event or course, like an Alpha Course, or the date they complete some training or attain a relevant certification. When Key Dates are used in conjunction with Smart Tags, you suddenly have a very powerful way of asking questions about your data - for example, a smart tag that identifies people who have a key date of 'joined in the last 6 months' but doesn't have a key date of 'attended newcomer event'. Now you have an invitation list for your next newcomer event!

In the context of pastoral visits, add a key date when the visit was first requested, another when the pastoral visit took place, and a further key date for when follow-up is needed. By recording this level of detail, which is easily accomplished using simple Smart Tags or the Key Dates report, you can quickly identify individuals who have not yet been followed up with.

For pastoral visits and meetings, Key Dates can also be useful for recording the date a visit or meeting took place. And when adding a key date against a person, you can add an optional description as well as add the date, perhaps for noting the person who visited them.

...which then shows in the person's Key Dates history.

As mentioned earlier in this article, you can optionally restrict the visibility of Key Dates so that only authorised users can see certain key dates.

Custom Fields

ChurchSuite provides most of the commonly used fields that churches need. However, if you wish to maintain personal information, including pastoral care-related data that doesn't fit neatly into a standard or optional field, you can easily add custom fields. For each custom field added, you can specify the format of the data to be stored in that field, making them versatile. Importantly, custom fields are fully searchable and reportable, which makes them ideal for many pastoral care use cases. For example, you might divide your Address Book contacts into distinct pastoral care groupings, with each person assigned to a 'pastorate' to deliver primary pastoral care and oversight.

Once a custom field has been added, field values can easily be assigned - either by editing a person's profile or as an 'edit custom field' action within Flows.

Using Tags to group contacts for pastoral care

Tags enable you to create custom groupings of people, where the purpose for grouping doesn't fit neatly into the Small Groups module. For example, you might tag your staff team, members, or electoral roll. Tags can also be useful for pastoral care, perhaps as a way of grouping those in need of, currently receiving or having received pastoral care, or perhaps as a means of maintaining a pastoral or safeguarding status.

Once tagged, you can quickly drill down to a list of all people with certain tags. Tags have several distinct advantages that will be helpful in the management and delivery of pastoral care: -

You can restrict the visibility of Tags, perhaps to your pastoral care team User Group (see earlier in this case study).
Tags can be used as filters in reports, ideal for filtering a particular report by just those with a specific pastoral care tag.
Tags enable targeted communication to just those in certain tags.
Tags can be used as conditions within Smart Tags, enabling you to drill down into your Address Book people based on just those in pastoral care tags.
Tags are only visible in your admin-facing ChurchSuite modules and are not surfaced in the member-facing My ChurchSuite.
People can be added to or removed from Tags from within Flows, making them easy to apply (when something is pertinent) and easy to remove (when the need passes).
Many processes in ChurchSuite can be bulk-processed by tag. For example, you can invite multiple people tagged for an event in one process, rather than inviting them individually.
Tags can be colour-coded or pinned to visually distinguish your 'pastoral care' related tags so that they stand out on people's profile pages.

Using the Bookings module for pastoral care

While the Bookings module is typically used for resources such as rooms and equipment, people can also be considered resources. For example, pastors, clergy and key pastoral staff members can be added as 'resources' within the Bookings modules, which can then be easily assigned against bookings for pastoral care appointments but also for life events such as weddings, marriage preparation, funerals, bereavement follow up, confirmation, baptism and prayer ministry appointments.

A great feature of the Bookings module is that you can assign Managers to resources (and booking Types). So in the example above, the Vicar, Rev Mary, is not only a resource that can be assigned to bookings, but Rev Mary is set as a resource manager to receive optional notifications when she is added (as a resource) or removed from a pastoral booking or when a pastoral booking is edited.

You can even create a "Pastoral Appointments" booking Type, with custom booking-related questions to gather all the necessary information when booking an appointment. You could even factor in travel time (the time on either side of the booking time) if you wanted to be creative. The "Send booking" email could be sent as an "appointment booking confirmation". Helpfully, notes can be added against bookings, and perhaps most importantly, you'll get clash warnings if you try to double-book a pastoral team member (resource).

There are several advantages to using the Bookings module for aspects of pastoral care: -

Access to the Bookings module can be restricted.
Appointment bookings can be shared collaboratively, allowing team members to view one another's bookings if desired.
Pastoral care team members can receive email notifications of new, changed or cancelled appointments.
"Out and about" team members can securely access their bookings planner in the ChurchSuite app or browser on their mobile device.
All the important pre-appointment information can be collected ahead of the meeting.
Multiple pastoral care team members (resources) can be assigned to a booking.
Appointment confirmations can be sent.
The bookings module Planner can be filtered by booking type or resource, allowing you to easily filter all pastoral appointments or all appointments for a particular team member.
Pastoral care team members can subscribe to an iCal feed of the "Pastoral Appointments" booking Type and view appointments in their preferred calendar application on their desktop or portable device.
Clash notifications - avoid double-booking people on appointments
Visibility of resources can be restricted by User Group, meaning that only members of the pastoral care team user group can view those appointments or bookings, keeping them confidential from your other bookings.

Add a link to your 'Getting help' form to the My ChurchSuite menu

In addition to the standard menu items in the member-facing My ChurchSuite, you can add custom menu items. You may already have a "Contact us" form on your website, or perhaps you've created a customised "Contact us" form in ChurchSuite and added it to your website. Either way, why not add a link to your form as a custom menu item in My ChurchSuite so that your members can easily get in touch if they need help or support with something? Custom menu items for external links are quick and easy to add in the My ChurchSuite Options in your Account Settings. Give your link a suitable name - e.g. "Need help?" - and type or paste the URL link to your 'contact us' form.

How are you using ChurchSuite?

The above suggestions are by no means an exhaustive list. These are just some of the ways that I've used, or seen others use, the features within ChurchSuite to help with managing and delivering pastoral care. How are you using ChurchSuite to help organise and manage pastoral teams? We'd love to hear from you and add your insights to this case study, so that others can benefit from your experiences as well.

What next?

I hope the above pastoral care suggestions are helpful to your church. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the ChurchSuite support team. We'd be delighted to help. Email support@churchsuite.com

All the best!