Subscribers and Lists

The people around your congregation, not just inside it.

Every congregation has a circle wider than its membership: visitors who want to hear from you, former members who moved away, family of members, supported preachers, and people who found your site and asked to be kept informed. None of them belong in the member directory, and all of them should be reachable.

Subscribers are exactly that: a contact record kept separate from your membership. Adding someone as a subscriber does not make them a member, does not put them in the directory, and does not include them in anything meant for members only.

Mailing lists then organize subscribers into whatever groups make sense for you, and a subscriber can belong to as many lists as apply.

Lists that work everywhere else in Congregate.

The lists you build here are available when you send email, text, or voice messages, so reaching a group is a matter of selecting it rather than assembling addresses. That is the whole point. The work of deciding who belongs together happens once, not every time you send something.

Subscribers can also be signed up for the daily and weekly recaps, which is often the simplest way to keep a wider circle informed without writing anything specifically for them. A former member across the country receives the same weekly summary the congregation does.

Because subscribers are separate from members, you can be generous about who you add without worrying that it affects your membership records, your directory, your attendance, or anything else that should count only members.