Church Networks

Church Networks gives trusted churches one place to coordinate while each church keeps ownership of its members, care records, giving, and ministry work. A church joins only after an invitation is accepted, and it can be suspended or leave without erasing the historical record. Staff work from Church Network in the dashboard. Members open Church Network from Connect or from a navigation item their church publishes. Network coordinators at the owner, parent, or regional church manage invitations, church-plant support records, and filing requirements. Other member churches can contribute their own submissions and take part in shared work without changing network governance.

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Create or Join a Network

To create a network:

1. Open Church Network.
2. Add the network name, region, purpose, and a short governance summary.
3. Select Create network.
4. Open Churches, enter another church’s public church UUID, choose its relationship, and send the invitation.

The invited church sees the invitation in its own dashboard and must accept it before shared work becomes visible. The directory distinguishes parent, plant, regional, and member churches. Use suspension when access must stop temporarily. A suspended or departed church loses future network access immediately, while past authorship and audit history remain intact.

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Support a Church Plant

Open Plants & support to coordinate the relationship without turning the network into the plant’s database.

• Create a launch checklist and move each item from not started to in progress and complete.
• Submit a bounded parent-support report for a defined period.
• Record attendance and new-member vitals alongside optional, planter-shared rest and wellbeing signals.
• Create the agreed support taper, then add planned and actual ledger entries.

The taper ledger records a bilateral agreement; it does not transfer money. Its totals and variance help both boards notice an unexpected reduction early.

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Publish Shared Campaigns

Use Campaigns to publish a network event or prayer initiative. You can link an existing public event from your church or publish a common prayer focus, date range, summary, and call to action. Members see active campaigns in the mobile Church Network hub. Event campaigns open Events, while prayer campaigns open Prayer Community, so registrations and prayer participation stay in their existing workflows.

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Coordinate Care and Benevolence Safely

A care-context transfer is a small, consented handoff for a member moving to a sister church. Select the member and receiving church, record the consent time, and share only the bounded context, preferences, and proposed next step. The member can withdraw a pending transfer before the receiving church accepts it. If a protected discipline/restoration case is linked to the member, an assigned leader can optionally share only its current status. The member must specifically consent to that status, and the receiving leader needs the separate discipline permission before viewing or responding. The case title, narrative, allegations, evidence, and restoration steps remain sealed at the source church. For benevolence, Care & benevolence can run a name-blind network check. It does not disclose a person’s identity or request notes. It only reports a safe coordination reference when another church already has an active case for the same normalized identity material. The workflow coordinates help; it does not disburse funds.

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Share a Clearance Passport

An authorized leader can issue an expiring safe-to-serve passport only after the member’s local volunteer profile has the required current clearance and the member has consented. The available passport claims are checked against that local profile. A leader cannot add a safeguarding, references, or code-of-conduct claim that the local record does not currently support. The member can copy the passport token from the mobile app. A receiving church verifies that token to see the current claims, issuing church, and expiry. The raw background report, provider response, report number, and private eligibility notes are never shared.

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Coordinate Pulpit Supply

Use Pulpit supply to:

1. Create a profile for a locally vetted preacher, including approved topics, a doctrinal summary, and a monthly limit.
2. Open a request for a dated service and record the expected handoff.
3. Let the sending church claim the request with an eligible profile.
4. Have the receiving church accept or decline the claim.

The monthly limit is checked against the service month before a claim is created. Accepting a claim fills the request and closes other pending claims.

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Prepare Denominational Filings

Create a filing requirement with a due date, instructions, and required local responses. Each member church reviews prefilled counts from its own current records before submitting. The network view rolls submissions up beneath the requirement while preserving which church supplied each figure. Prefill is an aid, not an automatic filing; the submitting church must review corrections and confirm the submission.

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Share and Adapt Ministry Resources

Use Shared resources for sermon packs, curricula, forms, campaigns, devotionals, workflows, playbooks, volunteer training, event templates, and sermon-series companions. Every resource keeps its author church, version, license, usage guidance, and review mark. A church can fork a published resource to adapt it; the new draft retains its source and root lineage. Members can read published resources and send field feedback from the mobile app. A Network blessed mark records the network’s review. It is not a claim that the resource is universally correct for every church tradition or context.

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Permissions and Privacy

Church Network uses three levels of access:

• View for the directory, ordinary operations, campaigns, filings, and shared resources.
• Manage for invitations, plant work, campaigns, filings, pulpit supply, and resources.
• Sensitive for consented care, name-blind benevolence, clearance passports, planter wellbeing, and sensitive audit events.

Network membership is required in addition to the staff permission. Sensitive details are encrypted, ordinary viewers see a restricted state, and important membership, care, safety, resource, and workflow actions are recorded in the network audit history.

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Payment Boundary

This release does not introduce an inter-church payment, escrow, marketplace purchase, or paid resource license. No new payment-provider dashboard or webhook setup is required.