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Jun 08, 2022

Event notes and visitor count for Groups

The heart of your small groups can usually be found in face-to-face conversations. Maybe someone shares a prayer request, a special moment, something to mourn, or maybe someone visited for the first time. The health of your group can depend on moments like this, and with Planning Center Groups, you can now keep better track of them with event notes and a visitor counter in Church Center! Event Notes On each event your leaders will have the ability to add a new note or view any notes made by

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

May 23, 2022

Emoji reactions in Groups messaging ❤️

What’s worse: getting a million responses of “ok” to your message or having no one respond because they don’t want to bother the group? Either situation is less than ideal, but there’s a new way around it—reactions! Reactions are an unobtrusive way to acknowledge, send love, and respond to a topic or reply to a message without blowing up everyone’s phone! Replies and Topics 🙏 Hold down on any message, and you’ll see a menu that allows you to react, and shows an option to view reactions.

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 18, 2022

Introducing My Church Center: A new home base for congregants

Where do your congregants go to see everything they’re involved in at your church? How do people RSVP for an event, see what they signed up for, and respond to scheduling requests without having to check four different places? Now they can check a single place for information on everything they’re involved in— My Church Center. What is My Church Center? My Church Center is your congregants’ new home base—where they can see important updates and notifications regarding anything they’re i

Jeff Berg

4 min read

Mar 03, 2022

New customizable content and style options for Church Center

You can now bring more unique content and style to your Church Center mobile app and website with Publishing’s new editor has more customization options! Contact Information The Contact block makes it easy to share an email address, phone number, or website, so people can reach out or find more information quickly. Event Schedule Want to share your service times on your home page? Maybe display a schedule for an upcoming event? You can use the Event schedule block to add the details to on

Benson Lee

Product Manager

2 min read

Nov 04, 2021

New customization options for pages in Church Center

Bring even more unique content and style to your Church Center mobile app and website with a brand new page editor in Publishing! Now you can give your Church Center presence a more customized website feel by creating your own page headings and stylizing your call to action buttons! Create Page Section Headings Section headings are a banner spanning your page with whatever image you upload. From there you can layer text over the image or add a button for a call to action! This way you can b

Benson Lee

Product Manager

2 min read

Aug 19, 2021

Add Group Members from Church Center

Say one of your group members brings a guest to their small group, and they decide they want to join officially—awesome! It’s now a little easier to add and invite new members to your group right from where you already are with the Church Center app! We think it will speed up the process of inviting new members, while respecting their privacy. It also gets new members instantly connected with their new Group in Church Center! Adding Members If you’re a leader in Groups, you’ll see a new butt

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

Jun 09, 2021

Control Group Notifications in Church Center

The primary pillar of Groups is connecting you and your community. It’s a balancing act to keep everyone in the know about when things are happening and keeping the swirling conversations in order. And now, it's a little easier to manage those conversations in Groups with new notification options and preferences! New Notification Options Wouldn’t it be nice if you could upload a resource to your group, and your group would just know without you emailing them about it? Especially because of B

Scott Myers

Product Manager

3 min read

May 05, 2021

Make Announcements with Church Center Push Notifications

Last-minute service cancellations, all-church meeting reminders, important community updates—these are the kind of things you want everyone in your church to know about as they happen. Now you can keep everyone in the loop by sending announcements to Church Center from People! You can send the notification to groups of people from the same place you send mass emails and texts—Lists! Similar to texting, your notifications have a character limit. Unlike texting, push notifications don’t cost an

Daniel Murphy

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 07, 2021

Manage Group Events in Church Center

With attendance and messaging already in the Church Center mobile app and on the web, it’s becoming the central spot for Groups-related activities. And with the release of new event management options, attendance alerts, and RSVP responses, we’re excited to bring even more of those day-to-day tasks to your fingertips. Events: Add, edit, and cancel Have you needed to update event details recently or perhaps an event was rained out, requiring you to cancel? Or maybe you finally decided on whe

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Dec 03, 2020

Planning Center Publishing is Out of Beta!

Planning Center Publishing is officially out of beta, and we're so excited about it we made a new video. 🎉 Custom pages, live streaming, and a sermon library for your mobile app are truly just the beginning of what you will be able to do on Church Center through Publishing. There will be even more ways for you to customize your app and site for your congregation in the coming months. So be sure to subscribe to the blog or keep an eye on social media to learn what’s new! New to Church Cente

Benson Lee

Product Manager

3 min read

Nov 19, 2020

Group Messaging: Out of Beta and On to the Web!

Since we launched the beta of group messaging, it’s become the place for small groups to stay connected with each other throughout the week. We released a few updates to the beta, but today we are ready to bring this feature home officially because messaging is available on the web! Now leaders can communicate with members from wherever and whenever they please—from their computer or on their phone through the app. This also means that members without smartphones won’t be excluded from the co

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Oct 07, 2020

View Household Registrations on Church Center

Ashley registered her middle schooler for camp, but her spouse wants to log in and pay the balance due. A volunteer registered Greg’s kids for VBS but he never received a confirmation email and wants to make sure they’re signed up. Robin’s husband signed their family up for the Sunday morning service, but when they go to show their confirmation, he realizes he left his phone at home. Now Ashley, Greg, Robin, and the rest of your congregants can view registrations for everyone in their household

Allie Rice

Product Manager

1 min read

Sep 22, 2020

New Sharing Permissions for Group Members

Personal information is...personal, and we all want to have control over who can access our email or phone number, even if it's with people at church. With our latest update in Groups, group members now control what contact information they’d like to share with each group they’re a part of. When people log in to Church Center, they’ll see an option to Review Shared Information in their groups. From there, they can choose the information they want to share with that particular group, and save

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

1 min read

Aug 04, 2020

Directory: A New Way to Connect in Church Center

It’s always awkward when you meet someone at church, invite them to lunch…and then forget their name on the drive to Panera. What about the stress when you promise to invite a couple to a small group and forget to ask for their phone number? No shame. We all do it, but also, awkward. Enter, the church directory—it’ll be relevant as long as community is, which is to say, always. As of today, you can give your congregation access to a directory in the Church Center mobile app, and on the web. I

Planning Center

3 min read

Aug 04, 2020

Announcing Planning Center Publishing: Create Custom Web and App Content

Today we are announcing Planning Center Publishing—a brand new product to power your presence in Church Center, the mobile app and website, with custom pages and video sermons! Church Center is an online experience where your congregation can explore, engage, and stay connected throughout the week. Publishing is how you make this app your own—how you connect with your congregation in unique ways through your own custom content. Each feature of Publishing gives you options. Church Center is yo

Planning Center

4 min read

Aug 04, 2020

Share Your Event Calendar with Congregants in Church Center

What is happening when? With more and more churches continuing to host some events virtually and others in-person‚ it feels like the calendar might be lying to us. Are you sure this event hasn’t been canceled? Is the monthly prayer meet-up on Zoom? Do I need to pre-register for Sunday service, or can I just show up? As of today, it might get a little easier to keep people in the loop. You can now share your Calendar events to Church Center, a custom mobile app and web experience where congreg

Planning Center

2 min read

Jun 15, 2020

Group Messaging: New Features and Improvements

Messaging can be as much fun as it is practical—a way to connect and laugh, and a way to share information and coordinate plans. Group Messaging is still in public beta while we work on polishing things up, but we didn’t want to wait too long before we released a few updates to improve both the fun and the practical side of this feature. So based on feedback from users, here are a few new options now available in Group Messaging! Stay on Topic One of the problems with group texts or email t

Jessica Fleming

Product Manager

3 min read

May 08, 2020

Check Out with the Church Center App

One of the universal challenges of children's check-in is getting parents to keep track of their security labels. Can we blame them? Even in the least stressful of mornings, it's hard to keep track of a little piece of paper! Shoving it into a Bible or deep into the depths of a purse or pocket seems like the right move when you're trying to hand off a squirming kiddo. However, most people can easily keep track of their phones—which is why parents can also find their security codes in the Churc

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read

Apr 13, 2020

Create New Opportunities for Community

I haven’t seen my small group friends in over a month. I miss them. Thankfully, we have our weekly video calls to catch up, pray, and talk about the sermon. It isn't the same, but it's good to have something. You and your church might be in the same boat—missing your people, and trying to figure out how to stay in touch as best you can. Nothing can replace being face-to-face, but community is still possible, and we want to show you how to lean on Groups to help your church find it. First, we’

Jeff Berg

4 min read

Apr 09, 2020

Self Check-In with the Church Center App

Taking attendance is pretty simple when people are physically present, but what about when you're hosting services or classes virtually? With the latest release of the Church Center app, congregants can now check their entire families into an event from home! This feature might be especially useful while your church is hosting online services, but it's really designed for any situation in which you want to take attendance, but don't want to print labels. So how does this work? Once you enab

Scott Myers

Product Manager

2 min read