Social Ministry / Case Management

[SusanG]

Many pastors work with people outside of their congregation, engaged in social ministry, providing pastoral counseling, and sometimes financial assistance. I think a Social Ministry / Pastoral Care section in PowerChurch would be very helpful for keeping track of all of the "case management" details, - a log for appointment dates, a place for notes, contact details, even a way to track when financial gifts (to provide assistance with a heating bill, etc.) have been made. I would find it helpful and the pastors I work with would find this helpful too.

What do you think - would you find a dedicated place for this kind of ministry work in PowerChurch helpful? How do you keep track of these kinds of details now?

Susan

[NeilZ]

Many pastors work with people outside of their congregation, engaged in social ministry, providing pastoral counseling, and sometimes financial assistance. I think a Social Ministry / Pastoral Care section in PowerChurch would be very helpful for keeping track of all of the "case management" details, - a log for appointment dates, a place for notes, contact details, even a way to track when financial gifts (to provide assistance with a heating bill, etc.) have been made. I would find it helpful and the pastors I work with would find this helpful too.

What do you think - would you find a dedicated place for this kind of ministry work in PowerChurch helpful? How do you keep track of these kinds of details now?

Susan

You can enter their data in Powerchurch Membership and setup special Mailing List & Personal Profile statuses for this use. You can then eliminate these records from everything else when doing reports. You can then setup the Ministry Services so that only the pastor can access.

Another idea is to install another copy of Powerchurch just on the Pastor's computer, he can then maintain all the data on that machine, without having to worry about outside access. Since this use would be well within the church's license for Powerchurch, it should not be a problem.

As far as adding it to the program, I would think it would have to be shown to be of use to a large proportion of Powerchurch users. Powerchurch is not a large company, and they have to allocate resources to add features that would give the most bang for the buck, both for the users as well as the company.