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Deacon family ministry with private care notes

Forty deacons log every visit and call as a private-by-default note, shared only with their campus pastor. Households come from a custom field in Planning Center People. The sharing rule (medical goes to the pastor only) was written before the tool was turned on.

By Caleb Brooks · Published · Editorial standards · Conflict of interest

Field guide page: steps and costs from hands-on church-tech work, written under a pen name. Church names stay private. See how we write and verify.

What are the exact steps?

  1. Write the sharing rule before turning anything on

    The rule at this church: hospital visits and anything medical go to the pastor only. Write it in a one-page doc elders and deacons can quote. It was written before the tool was switched on. The administrator's one piece of advice to other churches is exactly this. The rule decides what the software is allowed to do, not the other way around.

  2. Assign every deacon their households in Planning Center People

    In Planning Center People (the church's people database), a custom 'Deacon' field on each household does the assignment. Each deacon's list refreshes on its own as households come and go. No manual list maintenance in a spreadsheet. Campus pastors review assignments quarterly so empty households and overloaded deacons get fixed before Christmas.

  3. Train deacons on private-by-default notes

    One thirty-minute training: how to open a household, log a visit or call, and leave the note private. Say out loud what does not belong in a shared channel: diagnoses, marital conflict details, financial need amounts. FlockConnect (their care-notes tool) starts every note private. The default is that nobody else sees them.

  4. Deacons log every visit or call the same day

    After a visit or call, the deacon logs an interaction note in FlockConnect. Same day beats 'I'll remember Sunday.' Keep the note short: date, type of contact, next step, and anything the campus pastor must know under the sharing rule. Sync with Planning Center People means you do not retype the household name.

  5. Share with the campus pastor only

    The deacon shares the note with their campus pastor, not the whole care team and not the deacon Facebook group. Pastors read shared notes before they become hallway news. If a note is medical, it stays pastor-only under the written rule even when a deacon wants 'everyone praying.'

  6. Put the care report on the Tuesday staff agenda

    Campus pastors read the care report before the Tuesday staff meeting so care gaps surface weekly instead of never. Unvisited households and overdue follow-ups get a name and a due date in the meeting notes. The $9/mo Starter plan covers notes and reports; drift-flagging assistant features live on bigger plans and were not available when they signed up.

Which tools does this church use?

  • Planning Center People Church database (ChMS)

    A custom 'Deacon' field assigns households; each deacon's list refreshes on its own.

    $0 (already in the stack)

  • FlockConnect Other

    Care notes and care reports. Notes are private by default; deacons share them with their campus pastor only. Syncs both ways with People.

    $9/mo (Starter plan, flat)

Common questions

How do you keep pastoral care notes private?

Write the sharing rule before you turn the tool on. This church's rule: hospital visits and anything medical go to the pastor only. Their tool defaults notes to private, and a deacon shares a note with their campus pastor, never the whole care team.

What does a deacon care tool cost?

This church pays $9 a month flat for FlockConnect's Starter plan. No per-user fee, which matters with forty deacons. Starter covers care notes and care reports.

Why not keep deacon care in a shared Google Sheet?

A sheet puts a diagnosis next to a lawn-mower note where forty people can see both. This church left the sheet for that reason. Privacy failed even when the care itself was faithful.

Before you start

You need Planning Center People admin rights, agreement from both campus pastors on one sharing rule, and a one-page written policy elders will back when someone asks to “just share this with the team.” Do not buy a care tool first. Write the rule first. Flat pricing with no per-user fee matters at forty deacons; per-seat tools get expensive fast. Name who trains new deacons each year so the rule does not die with the first cohort.

Why they built it

Before this, deacon care ran on a shared Google Sheet. That meant a note about someone’s diagnosis sat next to a note about someone’s lawn mower, and forty people could see all of it. The problem was never logging the care. It was that the log itself was a privacy failure.

So the order of operations matters more than the tool: they wrote the sharing rule first (hospital visits and anything medical go to the pastor only) and only then turned on software that defaults to private. Flat pricing with no per-user fee was the practical requirement. At two campuses and 1,400 in attendance, hallway prayer updates travel fast. Software that makes sharing the default would recreate the sheet problem with a nicer interface.

What they’d do differently

Nothing about the tooling. The open items are elsewhere in the stack (a single guest follow-up owner across both campuses, and a proper duplicate-profile cleanup every August). For this workflow alone, they would train spouses of deacons never to read notes over a shoulder, and they would revisit the sharing rule once a year at deacon installation so new people hear it from elders, not from a forgotten PDF. The lesson travels well on its own: the rule comes first, the software second.

Monday checklist

  1. Campus pastors skim shared care notes from the weekend before Tuesday staff meeting.
  2. Flag any medical note that was shared too widely; fix access the same day.
  3. Check for households with no deacon assignment after membership changes.
  4. Confirm new deacons finished the thirty-minute private-notes training before they get login access.
  5. Quarterly: balance household counts so one deacon is not carrying a silent overload.
  6. Yearly: reread the one-page sharing rule at deacon installation.

Common mistakes

  • Turning on a care tool before writing who may see medical details.
  • Sharing notes with “the whole care team” out of habit.
  • Leaving the old Google Sheet alive “for history.” Archive it or delete it.
  • Skipping same-day logging until Sunday, then forgetting.
  • Giving every ministry leader admin rights in People while you are at it.

Field note after the lawn-mower sheet

A deacon typed a hospital diagnosis into the shared sheet the same afternoon another deacon logged a lawn-mower borrow. Forty people could open both rows. Nobody meant harm. The family still felt exposed when a well-meaning person “checked in” with details they had only told one deacon. That week the sheet was locked, and the sharing rule was drafted before any new tool demo.

Field note after a hallway prayer request

Someone asked the campus pastor to forward a medical note to a group text “so people can pray specifically.” The pastor declined and offered a general request without the diagnosis. The written rule made the no easier. Specific prayer is not the same as specific disclosure.