No one who asks for care is forgotten.
Church Care Central is a WordPress plugin that gives your church one private place to receive, assign and follow up on care requests.
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Her daughter asks for a visit through the website form
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Assigned to Tom, a deaconHe gets an email with a link and nothing private in it.
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Visit logged“Prayed with her before surgery. Family arrives Thursday.”
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Seven days with no contact, so Tom gets a reminder
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Phone call logged, request closed“Home and recovering well.”
You already keep a care list.
It is a spreadsheet, a group text, a stack of connect cards and whatever you remembered on the drive home. It mostly works, until someone who asked for a visit never gets one.
Church Care Central puts that list in one place on your own website, where each request has a name beside it and the date someone last reached out.
How it works
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Someone asks
A member fills in a short form on your website, for themselves or for someone else. You can also add a request yourself after a phone call.
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You assign it
Choose the pastor, deacon or volunteer who will follow up. They get an email telling them a request is waiting.
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Care gets written down
The caregiver logs each visit, call, card or meal. Notes can be marked confidential.
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Nothing goes quiet
If a request has had no contact within the number of days you set, the caregiver gets a reminder. Urgent requests have a shorter clock.
Who sees what
Care requests are some of the most personal things a church holds. The plugin was designed around who should be able to read them.
| Who | What they can see |
|---|---|
| Care admins | Every request and every note. They assign requests, add new ones and can export the list. |
| Care team members | Only the requests assigned to them. They cannot read another caregiver's confidential notes. |
| Anyone reading the emails | No names and no details. Emails give the category and a link to sign in. |
| Website visitors and search engines | Nothing. Requests are stored apart from your pages and posts, so they never show up in site search or feeds. |
Sign in with Google or Microsoft
Your care team uses the account they already have. You can make it the only way they sign in, so there is no extra password to lose.
You decide who is on the team
Signing in with Google or Microsoft only works for people a care admin has already added. Microsoft sign-in is limited to your church's own Microsoft 365 organization.
Your records stay with you
Everything is kept in your own website's database, not on someone else's service. Export the list to a spreadsheet whenever you like.
Removing the plugin keeps your data
Nothing is deleted when the plugin is removed unless you tick the box that says to.
Everything it does
- A request form you can place on any page
- Requests added by staff, for calls and conversations
- Categories you choose: hospital, grief, homebound, meals and more
- An urgent flag that moves a request to the top
- Assignment to a pastor, deacon or volunteer
- A contact log for visits, calls, messages, cards and meals
- Confidential notes
- A dashboard of what is new, in progress and waiting on a follow-up
- Open requests counted by category and by caregiver
- Daily follow-up reminders by email
- Care Admin and Care Team roles
- Google and Microsoft sign-in
- Export to a spreadsheet
Questions
What do we need to run it?
A self-hosted WordPress site on version 6.2 or newer, with PHP 7.4 or newer. It does not work on WordPress.com plans that do not allow plugins.
We already use a church management system. Do we need this?
Maybe not. Church Care Central is for churches that do not have one, or that want their care records kept on their own website and visible only to the care team.
Our volunteers are not technical. Will they manage?
A caregiver gets an email with a link, signs in with Google or Microsoft, and sees a short list of the people assigned to them, with a box to write down what they did.
How do we set up Google or Microsoft sign-in?
You register your website once with Google Cloud or Microsoft Entra, then paste two or three values into the plugin's settings. The readme that comes with the plugin lists the steps. Sign-in is optional; the plugin works with ordinary WordPress accounts too.
Does it connect to Planning Center or other church software?
No. It stands alone and needs nothing else.
Is it finished?
It is new. This is an early version, and feedback from churches using it will shape what comes next.