We use ChurchSuite for most of our rotas, calendars, administration and communication. If you’re part of Kings, you can have a ChurchSuite account to help connect you with church life.
In your account there are various settings for privacy and communication. It’s not always clear what they actually do, so this article will clarify how we use them.
To follow along, you’ll need to log into your ChurchSuite account in either the web or mobile app to follow, then go to the ‘My Details’ section.
You’ll then see four tabs. We’ll look at the three that are relevant:
Details tab
The main ‘Details’ tab is where you enter your personal information. If you change e.g. your email address, you only have to update it once in ChurchSuite and it’s correct for all your Kings involvement.
Anything you enter here is available to view by the church office, by the church staff and leaders, and by a very few other ministry coordinators who have full access to the Address Book for administrative purposes.
Church Directory opt-in
A little way down this page, there’s a box where you can opt-in to the Church Directory. When you opt in, you we be able to see the contact information of everyone else who has opted in, and they can see yours. You can select which of your information is visible in the directory on the Privacy tab (explained next).
If you want to opt in to the Directory, select ‘yes’ where it says “I want to use, and have my “visible” contact details be searchable in, the Church Directory”.
Privacy tab
This is where you can set the visibility of your contact details to others within ChurchSuite. If you tick the boxes on this page, the specified details will be visible to:
- Your cell group, if you’re in one
- The leaders of ministries that you’re involved with
- The Church Directory, if you’ve opted in
Please don’t press ‘Delete Account’!
At the bottom of the page is a link saying ‘Delete Account’. That might sound like it’s the right option for if you don’t want to use ChurchSuite or if you’re leaving the church, but that’s not the case! If you click that link it initiates a legal process whereby the church office and staff have to do an exhaustive search through all our documents and photographs and delete anything that you’re in. After we’ve confirmed that this is definitely your intention, we will not be allowed to ever contact you again.
If you’re leaving the church, just let us know, and we will deactivate your ChurchSuite account as part of the normal process.
If for any other reason you don’t want to use your ChurchSuite account, again, just let us know and we can agree together which of the options available is best for you.
Communication tab
The options here are to do with how the church office and staff can communicate with you.
General emails and SMS
Almost all of our communication is about matters essential to the life and ministry of the church. As per our privacy policy, that kind of communication is done on the legal basis of ‘legitimate interests’ rather than ‘consent’, so these checkboxes don’t affect our normal communication.
Occasionally we communicate about events or information that you might be interested in beyond our core activities. If you deselect either of the ‘general’ boxes on the ‘Communication’ tab we will not communicate with you about extra things in that way.
We have no plans to use the ChurchSuite SMS system, so that option is irrelevant.
Rota reminders
ChurchSuite allows you to opt out of the automated reminder emails that many of our ministry rotas send out. Please only opt out if your diary is very organised and you definitely don’t need the reminders.
As above, we don’t use the ChurchSuite SMS system.