Note: This is the 3rd post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches. I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.
Attending church is a family activity. This doesn't change in a multi-congregational church. A traditional church database being used to track multi-site church ministry may force the church to track each individual's primary campus separately, but this is both inefficient and misleading. It is very easy to get a family out-of-sync in the database.
While there are exceptions, the church assumes and expects that individuals from the same household will worship at the same time and on the same location. Furthermore, the multi-congregational church will generally assign care and assimilation to teams at each congregation (aka campus). Those efforts can be divided and confused if different members of the family are assigned to different congregations for care.
This brings us to another rule for our data model:
Rule #3: An individual's primary congregation is indirectly determined by their household.
As we developed our multi-congregational data model we made a choice to have an explicit record called a "Household" that would link people from one family together and allow the church to easily track the following things (among others):
- The family's primary congregation
- The family's primary address
- The family's home phone number
If this were the extent of our deliberations we would have hit some real problems! It wouldn't take long to come up with exceptions whereby an individual in a family is attending events at other locations or participating in groups from different congregations!
This brings me to an important principle: accountability should exist, but it shouldn't limit participation.
Our multi-congregational data model allows for an individual to belong to a household that is accountable to a primary congregation while attending groups and events that are based in other congregations and take place at other church locations.
Practical Application:
First Church is about to launch an "East Campus". An appeal went out to families living near the newest location. 45 people from 30 families have committed to participate in this effort. A new "Congregation" was created in the database and those 30 household records were updated to indicate their intention to begin to worship at this new place and time. Many of those 45 people will continue to belong to groups from their old congregation and attend events at the existing locations. Over time, their group roles and event attendance will probably shift to ones based out of the new "East Campus Congregation".
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