10 Workflow Ideas for the Planning Center People App
Over the last 15 years, our church has grown from a few people in a living room to a thousand people a Sunday morning. As that’s happened, one question I keep coming back to is this:
How do you make a big church feel like a small church?
In a small church, the pastor knows every new guest. Everyone knows when it’s your birthday. When you had your baby, the whole church filled your fridge with casseroles. The deacon wrote you a letter thanking you for your weekly offering.
In a larger church, the staff still want to do all those things, but it gets logistically more difficult. There are so many people!
But whether you’re a small church or a big church, there are some tools out there to help you make sure no one falls through the cracks.
Planning Center Workflows
Arrowhead Church, like thousands of other churches, uses Planning Center Online (PCO) as our Church Management System (ChMS). Their central online app is simply called “People” and it’s the central database of Planning Center across your ministries.
One very useful tool within the People app are the workflows. I think workflows are some of the most powerful, yet overlooked features of Planning Center. You can build them for first time guests, for caring for members, for thanking new donors- anyway that you might need to take a next step with someone in the church, you can use a workflow to keep track of. Some of this can even be automated or handed to volunteers!
In this post, I'll share 10 workflow ideas that have been game-changers for us, ensuring that no one falls through the cracks and every milestone is celebrated. In some of these, you’ll notice that some people are added to workflows through a list in the People app. Lists are a whole other topic we’ll cover one day, but they can be a powerful partner for workflows!
1: First Time Guests
Workflow description: Making a First Time Guest workflow is definitely a great way to start using workflows. Whenever a guest visits your church, what kind of follow-up do you want to have for them? In our case, we do up to three follow-ups over the course of a month, including a call, a text, and an email. At Arrowhead, a volunteer actually does this process and works within People workflows. As they hear from a guest, the volunteer makes notes on their profile (such as if it was just a one-time visit, if they are from out of town, or if there is a need we could help meet).
How people get added to the workflow: We’ve setup People Lists to automatically add some people to this workflow for us. For example, if someone check a child into AKids for the very first time, People automatically adds them to the First Time Guest workflow on Monday (if they’ve never been added before). But people are also added to this manually, simply by filling out an “I’m new here” card as a visitor on Sundays. A staff member collects all those cards and adds them into this workflow on Monday.
2: Expectant Families
Workflow description: We want to make sure any families with new babies are well taken care of, regardless of how many friends they have in the church. So this workflow helps us care for expecting families. You’ll see some of these steps are simply to keep track of who knows about a pregnancy. This way, the staff can be praying even before the whole church knows.
The “Meal Train Setup” step is actually assigned to a volunteer who creates and sends out the link for every meal train in the church. There is a list of ladies in our church who just love to cook meals for people! The volunteer sends the meal train link to that group, plus any Bible study or small group the family might be a part of.
On the “baby is born” step, we also give each new baby an Arrowhead onesie and a few baby books about the Bible for the parents to read with them.
How people get added to the workflow: These people will need to be added to this workflow manually as staff are made aware of new pregnancies.
3: New Donors
Workflow description: It’s such a gift when someone donates to our church, we want to be sure to personally thank each and every new donor. Using workflows ensures that no one is left off. Plus, because the People app is separate from the Giving app, the specifics of a donor’s gift is still private.
Every new donor is sent a letter from the lead pastor and an email thanking them for investing into our ministry. It’s just a small touch to let people know we appreciate their generosity.
How people get added to the workflow: We’ve setup a list in People so that donors get added automatically when they give for the first time.
4: Drop-Offs
Workflow description: At Arrowhead, we use Planning Center not only to track when people engage, but when they disengage as well. We call these workflows “drop-offs” and we have them for multiple ministries. The idea is that we want to reach out to someone who used to be regularly involved and suddenly aren’t. Often, there’s a logical reason for this (sickness, travel, work schedule), but at the very least it helps people feel cared for and missed. We’re not trying to annoy anyone or guilt someone into returning, but we do want to do what we can to care for people. Our staff work together with small group leaders to reach out to anyone in the church who might have disappeared.
How people get added to the workflow: We built a list in People that automatically adds someone to the drop-offs workflow if they regularly are involved, and suddenly they’re not anymore. The rules for those lists can get complicated and there are so many ways you can run them, but here are some examples:
A child who has checked in 4 Sundays over the last 12 weeks, but hasn’t checked in during the last 3
A student who has checked in 4 Wednesdays over the last 12 weeks, but hasn’t checked in during the last 3
An adult who used to be in a group, serve, and give more than 3 times in 3 months, but now hasn’t done any of those in a month
5: Care List
Workflow description: A care list workflow is tricky because the difficult situations a person can go through vary so much. Someone might be sick, or their loved one might be sick, or they might have lost a job, or a family home burned down, or a loved one died - suffering comes in many forms. Rather than build a workflow for each, very specific situation, we built one workflow we call “Care List.”
The first step is to assign a person to a church elder. Then, that elder gives them a call and plans a next step for care from the church. This is where those profile notes are so important - it helps us keep track of how we, as the church, are meeting the needs of someone in our church family.
How people get added to the workflow: They are added manually by a staff or elder as we are made aware of a situation.
6: Volunteer Training
Workflow description: When we have a new volunteer, someone who is interested in serving in a ministry, we want to make sure we’re preparing them well and doing our due diligence to protect our church. It’s really more than training, as you’ll see - it’s actually about volunteer on-boarding.
We have one “Volunteer Training” workflow that is used for every ministry, but during the very first step, a person is assigned to the staff member who leads the ministry they’re interested in serving.
This workflow helps us ensure we properly review every application (including references if they’re working with minors), get a thorough training completed, issue a background check, and get them scheduled.
How people get added to the workflow: People are added to this workflow manually by staff members. However, if we do a volunteer recruitment event with check-in, we could have these check-ins automatically add any attendees to the first step here.
7: Renew Background Checks
Workflow description: If anyone wants to work with minors at our church (kids, youth), a background check is one of the requirements they have to clear. In fact, we’ve setup our volunteer check-in system so that anyone without an active background check can’t even check in.
Our background checks are only valid for two years. It’s a very easy process for volunteers to renew it, but we have to remember to send the request to them. That’s why we built this workflow.
The first step is simply to assess whether that volunteer is still serving and whether a background check is necessary. If so, then we issue a new background check request and notify the volunteer that an email will come through with a request.
How people get added to the workflow: We built a list in the People app that automatically adds any Services team member who has a background check expiring within the month.
8: Baptism
Workflow description: We give a lot of care to the practice of baptism, as it’s a powerful milestone in the life of a believer. This workflow helps our pastors follow-up with anyone who might be interested in baptism, as well as ensure that we know who is getting baptized when.
You’ll also see there’s a step for a baptism gift at the end. Whenever someone is baptized at Arrowhead, we have a photographer to capture the moment. We frame a photo from the day and give to them, along with a QR code to all the digital photos from their baptism. It’s a small gift from our church to help them remember this milestone forever.
How people get added to the workflow: Someone can be added manually by a staff member. We also have a form on our website and app where someone can request to be baptized, and if they fill that out, they are added to this automatically.
9: New Members
Workflow description: Many churches, such as Arrowhead Church, take membership very seriously. At Arrowhead, we call our members “partners” because we have all agreed to certain priorities and are committed to each other. This workflow helps us make sure anyone who is ready to take that step is made a partner at the next opportunity. Once they’re voted in by our congregation, we use this workflow to ensure they are invited to our online church directory, assigned to an elder, and sent a welcome gift from the church.
How people get added to the workflow: They are added manually by a staff member once someone completes our membership class, called Arrowhead Essentials. We also have an automated list based on Essentials check-in data to help ensure no one falls through the cracks.
10: Birthdays
Workflow description: Saying a simple “happy birthday” with an encouraging note is a great way to care for people within the church. It’s a good opportunity to reconnect, to thank them for serving, and to encourage them.
It would be great if we knew every single one of our volunteer’s birthdays, but as your church grows, you’ll forget a few. We built this same workflow for every one of our ministries so that the staff member is made aware of all their volunteers’ birthdays a week ahead of time. That staff member then sends a postcard a few days before and a text the day of.
How people get added to the workflow: There is a People list that automatically adds people from a particular ministry if their birthday in PCO is within one week.
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