Connections: pastoral care for every church
Connections brings the people who need care, the teammates caring for them and every touchpoint into one shared place. It's now available to every church.
You can’t serve what you can’t see. Connections shows your team who needs care right now, who is caring for them, and what has already happened, so nobody slips through the cracks between staff, leaders and volunteers.
See who needs care
Open Connections in the sidebar. The view menu at the top switches between:
- Flagged: people whose warning lights or alerts call for a conversation, sorted by Priority with the most urgent first.
- Newcomers: people who are new, or who don’t have enough activity yet to score.
- My people: the people assigned to you, grouped by Overdue follow-up, Needs first contact and Contacted · awaiting follow-up.
- Leaders: each leader and the people they’re caring for, for those with access to everyone in Connections.
Follow through
- Assign a person to yourself or a teammate. Several people can share the care of one person.
- Record each conversation from the row’s menu with Log email, Log text or Log call. Or open the person and use Log touchpoint to add notes or record an in-person visit.
- Turn on Sync notes to Planning Center in Settings → Connections, and each touchpoint is saved as a note on the person in Planning Center too.
- When care is complete, choose End care and give a reason: Care complete, Left the church or Assigned by mistake.
A person’s Care tab shows their care history alongside Planning Center context such as Workflow state, Form responses, Household, Groups and Serving.
Who can use it
Owners and Admins have full access. For anyone else, open Settings → Connections → Connections access and identity and choose Manager, Editor, Assigned, Viewer or No access. Assigned lets someone edit only the people they lead or are assigned to. Leaders linked to their Planning Center profile can also see the people in groups you choose under Leader access. Changing Connections settings requires Manager access.
Save a filtered, sorted Connections view and reopen it from the view menu. Owners and Admins can share a view with everyone who has Connections access.
Tag people with your own labels, then filter Connections by tag.
Care follow-up alerts send a daily email listing the people in your care who need contact. Turn it off under Settings, then Notifications.