Your congregation has its own ideas and already established structures. It has its own requirements for the tools that we provide you with. Before you add more people to ChurchTools, you should think through these structures and map them in your ChurchTools.
ChurchTools is already equipped with a basic structure that is stored in the general system settings and in the modules in ChurchTools in the master data. Your ChurchTools works on the basis of this structure.
Once created, you will not change the system settings or master data frequently and they are usually only managed by administrators during operation. You can use, edit or extend this structure largely at your own discretion to tailor ChurchTools to your congregation.
In this tutorial, we will guide you through the important settings you should make at this point.
System settings #
Campuses #
A campus in ChurchTools is a kind of virtual administration room in which all the data collected in it is labeled and thus made filterable.
The Campus – Center was automatically created for your congregation when you created your ChurchTool, which you can of course customize for your congregation and for which you can store your congregation information.
Does your congregation have one or more other campuses, such as a daughter church or a missionary organization? If so, you can manage these “branch offices” in your ChurchTools, along with the people involved there and all other data. To do this, you can add additional campuses in the System settings of your ChurchTools. You can find out how to do this in our instructions for creating new campuses.
Each person in your congregation will later be assigned to exactly one campus.
Master data in the Persons module #
The data that is important for the further processing of personal data is stored in the master data of the Persons core module. Some useful master data has already been created that you can use as examples and templates. We will now show you the most important ones.
Department #
A department is a subdivision of a campus that has its own management structure and list of people.
This subdivision is useful if, for example, your congregation has a division between congregation and youth work, each of which has its own leader structure and list of people. If this is the case for you, you can add one or more departments to the standard Church list in the master data.
Does your congregation have independent departments with their own leadership structure and list of people? If so, you can find out how to do this in our guide to creating new departments.
Personal status #
The person statuses describe people’s relationships to your congregation. Each person always has exactly one status in ChurchTools: Member, Friend, Potential…. This is how the first permissions for the system are assigned later.
Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
- What person status do you have for the people in your congregation?
- Do you need to create new person statuses? Should you rename existing ones because they are labeled differently?
You can find out how to adjust the person status in our instructions.
Settings in the Groups module #
The data that is important for further processing of the group data is stored in the settings of the Groups core module. For example, group types are created here, to which you can later assign groups in order to structure them. Some common group types and other useful settings have already been created, which you can use as examples and templates. We will now show you the most important ones.
Group types #
Each group is assigned to exactly one group type. The types are the first categorization of groups and allow you to get a better overview of your groups. This also makes it easier for you to assign rights.
Common group types in congregations are small groups (properties, activities, etc.) and service groups. However, events are also a popular type of group, e.g. for church services, concerts or church camps.
Here we give you some ideas of what other group types there might be and what they can be used for.
- Small groups: Home groups, small groups, Alpha courses
- Service groups: All areas relating to a (Sunday) service, especially for service grouping in the Events module.
- Events: Community camps, action days, mission events, (camps)
- Leisure activities: If many camps are organized, a separate group type would be conceivable.
- Key: Listing of the church buildings/apartments for an overview of who has a key to the property.
- Newsletter: Various newsletters to which a person can sign up.
In our article on managing group types, you can find out how to customize the preset group types and create new ones.
Leadership and participation roles #
The leadership and participation roles describe the tasks or functions that a group member has. Each group type has its own roles. Some are already preset. For example, there are predefined roles for leaders and member/worker in service groups and recipients in newsletters.
The following questions will help you set up the Roles:
- What roles (tasks, functions) are there in this type of group?
- What are the leadership and participation roles? (A group with a registration function needs at least one leader. Otherwise the registration remains closed).
- Which of the participation roles should be defined as the default? (New group members are assigned this role by default if you do not set any other role. At least one Role must be defined as the default for each group type).
Next step #
With this prepared structure, you can now start with the actual data maintenance: Import people, create groups and map your congregation organization chart.