Getting started as a church leader or elder: accept to at-home

Accept the invitation

The email carries a secure link. It opens a page that greets you with your church's name and who invited you; sign in, or create an account, with the same email address that received the invite, confirm you are 18 or older and accept the terms, and choose Accept invitation. If your church linked the invitation to your person record, your sign-in attaches to it, history and all.

The link works once and expires after 14 days, so if it has lapsed, ask for a fresh one rather than hunting for the old email.

• Accept with the invited email address; a linked invitation attaches your sign-in to your existing record.
• Everyday work needs only your normal sign-in; sensitive steps like inviting a teammate or exporting data ask for a second step, and one check lasts 24 hours.
• Home, Care, and the reports desk lead with your care assignments; profiles answer who cares for whom.
• Log care with the raised Log button; a church leader's notes start as Only me, a care partner's start with care leadership, and sharing is a per-note choice.
• Follow-ups suggest the assigned teammate first and surface overdue ones.
• If you lead a group, take service attendance on the face grid; a Sunday-afternoon nudge reminds you.

When FlockConnect asks for a second step

Everyday work needs just your normal sign-in: looking up people, writing and reading care notes, and choosing who can see a note. Right after accepting, FlockConnect offers to set up where your codes go: an authenticator app, a text message (US mobile numbers only), or an email. It takes a minute, and you can skip it for now. Email is the simplest, but it is also the least safe.

A second step is asked only before the few steps that could expose your church's data or change who holds the keys, like inviting a teammate, changing a teammate's role or permissions, or exporting data, when your permissions include them. FlockConnect asks right where you are, then picks up where you left off, and one check covers you for 24 hours. If you haven't set up a way to get your codes yet, it walks you through it then.

Find the people in your care

Your permissions decide what you can open; your care assignments mark who is yours to look after. Home and Care lead with your care assignments before the church-wide view, and the care reports desk has a My flock filter beside Whole church. Any person's profile answers the reverse question in its Cared for by panel.

If your assignments look empty, that is a conversation with your account owner, not a bug: assignments are written down under Care, and yours may simply not be entered yet.

Log care and route follow-ups

The quick log is the everyday tool: on your phone, the raised Log button in the bottom bar; pick the person, write what happened, done. As a church leader, your notes start as Only me, and the visibility picker spells out in words who else would see one before you share it. Notes logged by care partners start shared with the owners and with church leaders who hold care access, so if you hold care access, their care work reaches you without a second step.

Add a follow-up when a moment needs a next step; it suggests the assigned teammate first and surfaces overdue ones where they cannot hide. On the reports desk, submitted reports wait for review, and on a desktop the j, k, and r keys move through the queue.

Sundays, if you lead a group

Group leaders take service attendance for their own group on a face grid: mark who was at the service, save, about a minute. It's one list your group's leaders share, so your marks and removals change it for all of them. A Sunday-afternoon reminder arrives by email or push, whichever you choose in Settings under Notifications.

That small habit, multiplied across leaders, is how the church sees presence honestly, and how a quiet absence gets noticed while it is still one Sunday, not five.