Note: This is the 2nd post in a series about a data model for multi-congregational churches. I will use the terms multi-site and multi-congregational churches interchangeably.
A good database model will prevent redundancy and promote clarity! When you attempt to use a traditional church database to manage multi-site ministry you often end up listing your congregations several times in different areas of the system! This complicates many tasks including basic navigation and reporting.
Rule #1: We want to list our Congregations once and only once.
When I began modeling multi-congregational churches a few years back it became clear that some multi-site ministries were more complicated than others! In some cases, a church has multiple congregations in one location! This is most common when two different language groups worship at different times in the same location.
Rule #2: Many Congregations can share the same location. We need a separate list of locations.
While multi-congregational churches come in several styles. It is best not to assume that there will only be one congregation at a single location. Churches widely refer to their sites as "Campuses" and even use this term to refer casually to the people who gather for worship at those locations. The word Congregation is not used by most cutting edge multi-site churches. Public facing software may need to accommodate this common practice. For instance, when someone goes online to make an offering they may need to be asked to "pick their campus" if that is the language they expect. However, depending on the culture they might be asked to "pick their church" or "pick their venue". Regardless of the public semantic in use by a church the multi-congregational data model needs to prevent redundancy and promote clarity! For this reason, the list of congregations and the list of locations should be separate and exist only once.
Practical application:
Maria is the administrative assistant to the First Church Español. When she books an event, she clearly indicates it is for the First Church Español (a congregation), but the event will be held at the Central Campus (a location) so room availability should be checked against all the events in that location by all congregations that use that location.
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