Monday morning
Following up with visitors
Four stages, one tap to advance, and a short paragraph about writing a first message that doesn’t feel like marketing.
Last updated
What this does
Keeps every first-time visitor in a single list so none of them slips past Monday morning — and tells you which ones still owe a call.
When you’d use it
Monday around 9 a.m., once the weekly summary email has named the new visitors from yesterday. Open Follow-upsand you’ll see one row per visitor, sorted with the cards you starred at the top, then the most recently active. The pastor question this answers is “who do I still need to call this week?” — not “what stage is everyone in?”
You’ll come back to it after each Sunday and again on the Thursday in between. Two visits per week is enough; the pipeline doesn’t reward more.
Step by step
The four stages
Cards always sit in one of four stages. The names are short on purpose — long stage names start to look like marketing copy:
New.The visitor just filled out the connect card. You haven’t talked to them yet. By Monday afternoon every card should be out of New — either you’ve said hello, or you’re about to.
Reached out.You’ve made first contact. A text, an email, a phone call — anything from your side counts. This is also where a card sits while you wait to see if they come back next Sunday.
Returned. They came to a second service. This is the stage that tells you the relationship has a pulse. Most visitors who reach Returned end up at Connected within a month.
Connected.They’re plugged in. Maybe they joined a small group, started giving, or just keep showing up reliably. Connected cards leave the active pipeline so it doesn’t get cluttered — you’ll see the running total in the header on Follow-ups.
Working the list on Monday
Open Follow-ups. Go to Follow-ups. The default view is a single sorted list — one row per visitor with their name, the stage they’re in, and how long ago anything happened on the card. If you prefer the column view, the Pipeline toggle in the top right shows the same data as a Kanban board.
Star the cards that matter most.Tap the star on the left of any row to mark it high priority. Starred rows float to the top of the list so the next time you open it, your most important calls are first. Use this for the family with three kids, the recently widowed visitor, the friend of a friend — whoever you’d feel worst about losing track of.
Advance a card with one tap. Each row has a button on the right showing the next step. A card in New shows Reached out; a card in Reached out shows They came back; a card in Returned shows Connected. Tap it. The card moves and the change is logged on the card’s timeline. You don’t have to add a note.
Open a card when you want to log a call. Click the visitor’s name to land on their card. The Log an actionform lets you record a call, a note, an email, or an SMS — whatever you just did — and writes it to the timeline so future you remembers what was said.
Send the first message.A short, real email beats a long one. Three sentences is enough: thank them for visiting, mention one specific thing you noticed (kids’ names, where they sat, something they wrote in the prayer request field), and invite them back next week. Send it from Messages if you want it logged on their profile.
What “Connected” actually means
Connected is whatever it means at your church. It’s not a feature flag — it’s the moment you stop worrying about this person. For a small church that might be “they’ve been here four Sundays in a row.” For another it might be “they joined the Wednesday Bible study.” Pick a threshold that fits your church and apply it consistently. The pipeline doesn’t enforce one definition.
The visitor-to-member promotion
Separately from the follow-up stage, Ministry Manager watches check-ins. Once a visitor has been checked in to enough services (three by default — the threshold lives in your church settings), their membership status flips from visitor to active automatically. A note is added to their profile’s activity log so you can see when it happened.
Two things to know about this:
The promotion is about membership status, not the follow-up stage. A visitor can become an active member while their follow-up card is still in Reached out. These tracks run in parallel on purpose — you might know someone counts as a regular before you’ve had a real conversation.
If you disagree with a promotion, open the person on Peopleand flip the status back. The auto-promote isn’t going to second-guess you.
If something goes wrong
You tapped the wrong advance button. Switch to the Pipelineview in the top right. In the Kanban board you can drag the card backward to the right stage. The timeline records the second move, same as the first — there’s no penalty for changing your mind.
The card stayed in New for two weeks. That’s the signal the system is supposed to surface. Star it, advance it to Reached out the next time you make contact, and write a note on the card so you remember why it sat. If this happens often, the welcome team is taking the card but not recording the conversation — ask them to tap it forward on their phone.
A visitor came back but no card moved. The pipeline doesn’t advance automatically on a second check-in — you tap They came backwhen you notice them. That’s intentional: the goal is to make you see them again, not to automate the noticing.
You can’t find the visitor who scanned the card. Their card sits in Follow-ups under their own name as it was typed on the connect card. If they wrote “Mike” but you know them as “Michael,” search by last name instead. The profile is also on People; rename there and the follow-up card updates with it.
The card’s gone from the pipeline and you didn’t move it.Someone else on the team did — check the timeline on the card detail page; every stage change is logged with who and when. If it moved to Connected, the pipeline counter in the header shows the running total and you can click through from there.