Pastoral Care

Pastoral Care gives members a private place to ask their church for help and gives authorized staff one organized workspace for follow-up. Members can request general care, hospital or home visits, new-baby support, counseling, benevolence, grief, illness, crisis support, pastoral follow-up, wedding preparation, baby dedication, funeral support, relocation support, or a pastoral recommendation. Requests do not appear in community feeds or public member directories.

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Start With the Right Workspace

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Before You Start

Before inviting members to use Pastoral Care:

1. Name the leader accountable for safeguarding and response quality.
2. Give Pastoral Care only to staff who should see ordinary cases.
3. Give Sensitive Pastoral Care only to the smaller group permitted to see pastoral-only, counseling, benevolence, crisis, and restricted life-moment information.
4. Confirm who owns new requests during weekdays, weekends, and staff absence.
5. Agree on your urgent-care and emergency handoff process.
6. Review the configured closed-case retention period.
7. Submit a test request and practice assignment, follow-up, resolution, withdrawal, and content removal before announcing the feature.

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Where Members Find It

Members open Connect in the mobile app and tap Pastoral Care. From there, a member can:

• Share a new confidential care request.
• Choose how soon they need follow-up.
• Choose in-app, phone, text, or email contact.
• Review active and past requests.
• See whether a caregiver has been assigned.
• See the next scheduled follow-up when one is available.
• Review scheduled care visits, the assigned caregiver, and the information needed for the visit.
• Review a new-baby support plan and the kinds of support being coordinated.
• Choose which private life-moment dates the care team may remember.
• Pause automated celebration messages during a sensitive season.
• Edit or withdraw an open request.

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Sharing a Care Request

To share a request:

1. Open Connect.
2. Tap Pastoral Care.
3. Tap Request care.
4. Choose the type of care.
5. Describe what the care team needs to know.
6. Choose the privacy boundary and urgency.
7. Choose a preferred contact method.
8. Confirm that the church care team may contact you.
9. Tap Share confidentially.

Counseling, benevolence, and crisis requests are automatically restricted to pastoral staff. Other requests can be shared with the wider authorized care team or restricted to pastoral staff. Urgent and crisis requests show an additional safety notice. Pastoral Care is a church ministry workflow, not an emergency service.

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Choosing a Privacy Boundary

Care team means authorized caregivers may see the request on a need-to-know basis. Pastoral staff only restricts it to staff who also have Sensitive Pastoral Care access. Counseling, benevolence, and crisis requests always use the pastoral-only boundary. This safeguard applies even if a member-facing app submits a wider choice.

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The Staff Care Workspace

Authorized staff expand Pastoral Care under Church Management and open Care Requests. The workspace shows active, new, urgent, unassigned, and overdue totals. Staff can search for a member and filter the queue by status, type, urgency, or owner. Opening a request lets an authorized caregiver:

• Assign an eligible same-church owner.
• Move the request from assigned to in progress and resolved.
• Schedule the next follow-up.
• Add confidential notes.
• Create and complete follow-up tasks.
• Record a private resolution summary.
• Review the safe activity history.
• Schedule and complete hospital or home visits.
• Create a new-baby support plan with dates, a coordinator, and requested support.

A caregiver must be assigned before care can move into active follow-up. Closed requests cannot be reopened.

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A Reliable Daily Care Rhythm

A simple operating rhythm keeps urgent work visible without turning the workspace into a surveillance system:

1. Review new, urgent, unassigned, and overdue totals at the beginning of the care team’s working day.
2. Assign one eligible owner to each request that is ready for follow-up.
3. Agree on the next action and record the next follow-up date.
4. Use visits and tasks for concrete commitments rather than placing long narratives in notes.
5. Resolve a request only after the agreed care step is complete, then record the minimum useful resolution summary.
6. Review upcoming visits and response coverage before weekends, holidays, and planned caregiver absences.

When more detail is not needed for continuity or accountability, do not record it.

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Coordinating the Care Team

Expand Pastoral Care under Church Management and open Coordination to see the shared care schedule. The coordination view shows:

• Upcoming visits for cases the current staff member is permitted to see.
• Primary and backup response coverage.
• Recurring weekly availability for each caregiver.
• Simple counts for active cases, open tasks, and scheduled visits.

Use Schedule coverage to assign a primary caregiver, an optional backup, and the response window. Use Edit availability beside a caregiver to add or remove their recurring weekly windows. These counts help the team distribute ordinary work. They are not a workload score, wellbeing assessment, or automatic overload warning. Coverage notes are for operational rotation information only and should never contain member or case details.

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Member-Approved Life Moments

Members open Pastoral Care and tap Manage care preferences. Reminders are off by default. A member can:

• Allow birthday, grief, illness, crisis, or hard-anniversary follow-up separately.
• Choose in-app, phone, text, or email as the preferred contact method.
• Say whether a gentle message is welcome, the care team should ask first, or the date should be remembered without contact.
• Add a one-time or yearly private date and choose how many days ahead the assigned caregiver should be reminded.
• Pause, edit, or permanently remove a private date.

These dates are not community recognition posts. They create a confidential staff follow-up only after the member opts in. Authorized staff open Life Moments from the Pastoral Care submenu to review due follow-ups, assign an eligible caregiver, and record the minimum encrypted outcome needed for continuity. Restricted grief, crisis, and hard-anniversary moments remain visible only to staff with Sensitive Pastoral Care access.

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Consent-First Care Radar

Authorized staff open Care Radar from the Pastoral Care submenu to review supported signals that may need human attention. Care Radar is disabled by default. An eligible administrator can enable it and choose thresholds for:

• Confidential care cases that remain unowned.
• Confidential follow-ups that become overdue.
• A caregiver’s active-case count reaching a simple review point.
• Consecutive recorded Community Group absences.

Community Group participation review also stays off for each member until that member separately enables both Care Radar and group participation follow-up in their Pastoral Care preferences. Every signal remains a review prompt. It does not diagnose a member, assign a wellbeing label, send a message, or open a care case. Authorized staff can acknowledge or dismiss a visible signal and may add a minimum encrypted review note. The source-readiness list in the Care Radar view identifies sources that are not yet available. General service attendance, guest continuity, household attendance drift, serving decline, and stopped-serving review remain deferred until their histories and consent boundaries are reliable.

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Rites, Coverage Mode, and Preaching Planning

Authorized staff expand Pastoral Care under Church Management and open the specific workspace they need.

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Funeral and Wedding Runsheets

Open Rite Runsheets to create a funeral or wedding planner from an existing confidential care case. The workspace adds a ten-item starting checklist for family communication, people, service details, venue, documents, music, and practical logistics. Staff can assign a coordinator, record the event date and venue, add only the family preferences and private details needed for coordination, and add custom checklist items. Checklist items and the runsheet move forward and cannot be reopened after completion or cancellation.

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Caregiver Coverage Mode

Open Coverage Mode when a caregiver will be away. Select the caregiver, the person covering, the date window, and a minimum encrypted handoff summary. The workspace snapshots the caregiver’s active assigned cases at that point. The covering caregiver can record a per-case next action and see how many tasks and activities were recorded during the coverage period. Ending coverage hands open items back for re-entry review. This is a bounded absence workflow, not a permanent transfer of care.

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Preaching Calendar and Scripture Ledger

Open Preaching Plan to record the scheduled date, audience, service, speaker, title, series, Scripture references, and relevant liturgical or civil moments. Preparation notes remain encrypted. When a reviewed plan is marked delivered, its Scripture references contribute to the Scripture ledger. The ledger starts with manual plans recorded in this workspace. Older sermon upload dates are not treated as preached dates. These three areas are staff-only. Members continue to see safe status, follow-up, and visit information through their linked Pastoral Care case.

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Quiet Days and Milestone Messages

Members can add a quiet-day window for birthday, wedding-anniversary, baby/family, or all celebration messages. The existing automated directory birthday and anniversary reminder excludes the member while that suppression is active. A member can optionally allow a private pastoral acknowledgment and add restricted guidance. The reason and guidance are not shown to the wider care team.

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Scheduling a Visit

Open a care request and select Schedule visit. Choose a hospital, home, or other visit, then set the caregiver, date and time, location, and only the private instructions needed for the visit. After the visit, select Complete and record the minimum outcome needed for continuity. A scheduled visit can also be cancelled. Completed and cancelled visits cannot be reopened. Members can review their own visit schedule and safe visit details in the mobile app. Staff coordination controls and support-plan notes are never shown there.

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New-Baby Support Plans

When a member chooses New-baby support, authorized staff can create a support plan in the same care case. Choose a coordinator, plan dates, and the requested support, such as meals, visits, transport, supplies, or prayer. Members can see the coordinator, dates, and selected support. Private coordination notes remain staff-only.

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Rollout and Review

Start with a small care team and a test member account. During the first weeks, review:

• How long new and urgent requests wait for an owner.
• Whether next follow-up dates are being kept current.
• Whether members receive the contact method they chose.
• Whether caregivers are recording only the minimum necessary information.
• Whether sensitive access is limited to the intended people.
• Whether weekend and absence coverage is clear.
• Whether withdrawn and resolved requests move through retention as expected.

Do not use active-case counts as a performance score. The number of cases does not describe complexity, emotional weight, caregiver wellbeing, or quality of care.

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Permissions

Pastoral Care uses two staff permissions:

• Pastoral Care allows access to ordinary care-team cases.
• Sensitive Pastoral Care allows access to pastoral-only, counseling, benevolence, and crisis cases, restricted life moments, and Community Group absence signals. It is also required for rite runsheets and caregiver absence coverage.

Preaching planning is available to staff who already manage audio or video sermons and have access to the Pastoral Care workspace. Changing the church’s Care Radar policy requires both administrator access and Sensitive Pastoral Care. Hiding the dashboard link is not the security boundary. Requests are also filtered by church and permission when they are loaded or changed.

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Privacy and Retention

Request details, contact details, notes, task content, visit location and instructions, visit outcomes, support preferences, support-plan notes, coverage notes, private life-moment titles and guidance, quiet-day reasons, follow-up outcomes, Care Radar review notes, rite family and logistics details, runsheet checklist content, caregiver absence handoffs, per-case next actions, preaching preparation notes, and resolution summaries are encrypted. Staff access and important workflow actions are recorded. Notifications use general language. They do not place a member’s identity, contact details, request content, notes, task content, or resolution content in the alert. After a request is resolved or withdrawn, private content is kept for the configured retention period and then removed. The minimum status and activity history remains for accountability.

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Prayer Follow-Up

When authorized staff create a Pastoral Care handoff from an urgent prayer request, the handoff opens a linked care case. The original prayer title and description are not copied into the care case. Only the minimum coordination note and source reference move across the boundary.

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Pastoral Care in a Church App

Third-party church apps can offer the same member-owned care-request, life-moment, and quiet-day workflows through the supported v1 partner API. Only the member-facing mobile operations are public. Staff notes, tasks, coordination, Care Radar review, rites, coverage, and preaching tools remain inside the protected staff product. Developers should follow the Pastoral Care integration guide and generated endpoint reference.

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Troubleshooting

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A staff member cannot see a request

Confirm that the staff member belongs to the same church and has Pastoral Care. If the request is pastoral-only or uses a sensitive care type, they also need Sensitive Pastoral Care.

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A request cannot move to in progress

Assign an eligible caregiver first. The care workflow does not allow active follow-up without a clear owner.

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A request cannot be edited or reopened

Resolved and withdrawn requests are closed. They cannot be reopened. After retention removal, confidential request content also cannot be restored.

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A private date does not create follow-up

Confirm that the member enabled the master reminder setting and the matching follow-up type, the private date is active, and an eligible caregiver is assigned. A quiet day may also intentionally suppress celebration messaging.

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Care Radar does not show Community Group absence signals

The church policy, member Care Radar consent, and member Community Group participation consent must all be enabled. The member must also have qualifying recorded group attendance history.

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The wrong caregiver appears unavailable

Review the recurring availability record and the coverage date range. Coverage Mode is a bounded absence handoff; it does not permanently reassign the caregiver’s cases.

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Not Included Yet

This release does not yet include:

• General service-attendance, household-drift, guest-continuity, or serving-disengagement signals.
• Automated meal trains or geographic visit routing.
• Baptism testimony or class/readiness destinations.
• Automatic month-three, first-holiday, or long-illness pacing templates.
• Weighted caregiver overload scoring, wellbeing labels, keyword urgency inference, or automatic member-facing action from a Care Radar signal.
• Sealed successor handoff dossiers or a personal-story illustration vault.
• Automatic historical sermon-ledger import.
• Specialized recovery, confession, reconciliation, immigration, prison correspondence, or anonymous care workflows.

These areas will be added in later dependency-aware phases after their source data, consent, communication, and safeguarding rules are available.