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Communication

Sending email and text to your church

One To: field, two channels, and a clear consent gate that keeps your texts on the right side of the rules. How to send, who hears it, and what gets logged.

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What this does

Sends an email or a text message to the people you choose — one person, a tagged group, a membership status, or everyone — and logs the send so the history is there next week.

When you’d use it

A Sunday reminder. A note to last week’s visitors. A prayer request to the elders. A schedule change to the worship team. Use email for anything longer than a sentence; use SMS when the message has to land in the next ten minutes — weather cancellations, a room change, a quick yes-or-no.

Both channels live at Messages. The history page shows every send your team has made, with an Email or SMS badge on each row.

Step by step

The recipient picker (same for both channels)

The To: field is one combobox with three sections in the suggestion list:

  • People.Start typing a name. For SMS, only people with a phone number on file show up — suggesting someone the text can’t reach would just waste a tap. You can stack as many people as you want.

  • Tags. Pick a tag (e.g. worship-team or elders) and the send goes to everyone with that tag. You can stack tags. You can’t mix tags and people in the same send — pick one approach.

  • Groups. The four membership statuses (All active members, All visitors, All inactive members, All archived people) and the catch-all (Everyone with email for email, Everyone with a phonefor SMS). These are exclusive — picking one clears any other chips, because you’re addressing a whole bucket.

Path A — Sending an email

  1. Open the compose page. From Messages, click New message. The email composer opens at /messages/compose — that’s the default channel. If you landed on SMS by accident, use the Email pill at the top.

  2. Add recipients. Type into the To: field and pick from the suggestion list. Chips appear above the input. Backspace removes the last chip.

  3. Write a subject and body.Both are required. The preview line under the body tells you who the email is going to in plain words — “Will send to people in 2 tags”— before you commit.

  4. Tap Send email. A confirm dialog repeats the recipient summary one more time. Confirm and the email goes out. The success panel shows how many delivered and how many failed; the history page logs the send with a status badge.

Path B — Sending a text (SMS)

SMS works the same way as email, with one extra rule: a person has to have opted in to receive a text. This is a legal requirement (TCPA), not a Ministry Manager preference. The app enforces it for you.

  1. Open the SMS composer. From the email compose page, click the SMS pill at the top, or navigate to /messages/compose-sms directly.

  2. Add recipients.Same picker. Suggestions are pre-filtered to people who have a phone number, so the only people you can add are ones the text could physically reach. At send time, anyone in the selection without SMS consent is skipped silently — you’ll see the breakdown after the send.

  3. Write the message. The character counter at the bottom right shows 0 / 160. Stay under 160 and the message goes as one SMS segment. If you go over, the counter turns red and Send SMS disables until you trim it.

  4. Tap Send SMS. Same confirm dialog, same one-way commit. The success panel reports N sent, and if any recipients were skipped you’ll see a breakdown: no SMS consent, no phone, or opted out. A link below it offers the one-time opt-in ask (next section) so the next send reaches more people.

The one-time SMS opt-in ask

You can only text people who’ve opted in. To get there from a directory that mostly hasn’t opted in yet, Ministry Manager has a single, one-shot broadcast that asks for consent the right way:

  1. Open the opt-in page. A banner appears on Messageswhen anyone in your directory hasn’t been asked yet — tap it to land on One-time SMS opt-in. Owners and admins only.

  2. Read the four counts. The page shows Will be asked, Already opted in, Already opted out, and Already asked. The ask never goes to the same person twice — that’s what the Already asked count protects.

  3. Send. The preview block shows the exact wording. Each recipient gets one text. YES opts them in; STOPopts them out; anything else is ignored. Replies are recorded automatically by the Twilio webhook — you don’t have to do anything with the replies.

A person who has been asked once is permanently in the Already askedbucket, even if they didn’t reply. Re-asking the same number is what gets churches in trouble. If someone changes their mind later, they can text YES to your number any time, or you can record their consent manually from their profile.

What gets logged

  • Every send appears on Messages. Channel badge, subject (for email) or first 60 characters (for SMS), recipient count, status, and date.

  • Per-profile history.Each recipient’s profile shows the message in their activity log, so when you’re looking at a card on Follow-upsyou can see what’s already been said.

  • Connect-card notification emails go to all owners and admins.When a visitor fills out the connect card, the notification email is broadcast to every owner and admin on your team. There’s no per-person picker for that — remove someone from your team if you need to stop them from getting the notifications.

If something goes wrong

  • The SMS not configured warning is showing. Your account doesn’t have a text-messaging provider connected yet. Email still works. Email support@ministrymanager.io to get SMS enabled for your church — it’s a one-time setup on our end.

  • People you expected to reach were skipped. The skipped breakdown on the success panel tells you why: no SMS consentmeans they haven’t opted in yet, no phonemeans there’s no phone number on their profile, and opted out means they replied STOP at some point. For the no-consent group, send the one-time opt-in ask. For the no-phone group, add a number to their profile from People.

  • The character counter went red.Trim the message. SMS segments past 160 characters split into multiple texts on the carrier side and cost more — the counter is there to stop a surprise. If the content genuinely needs more room, that’s an email.

  • Someone replied STOP and you want to undo it. You can’t, and you shouldn’t. STOP is permanent by design; reaching back out after a STOP is the move that gets a church reported. If the person calls and says they changed their mind, ask them to text YES to your number themselves. The opt-in has to come from their phone.

  • The same person got asked twice.They shouldn’t have — the opt-in is one-shot per profile. If you’re seeing a duplicate, the same person probably exists as two profiles in your directory. Merge them from Peopleand the duplicate ask won’t happen again.

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