Pastoral Care & Prayer

Members submit prayer requests through the member portal, or a pastor enters them directly from a conversation. Each request is logged with the member, the nature of the need, and the date received. The prayer team sees all open requests and marks them answered when the situation resolves.

Before or after visiting a member in hospital, at home, or in difficult circumstances, a pastor opens a care visit record and writes up what was shared and agreed. Visit notes are timestamped and attached to the member record so any care team member picking up the case has the full picture before they go.

For members going through an ongoing process — grief support, marriage preparation, recovery, or another journey requiring multiple sessions — a counselling case holds all session notes together in one place. The pastor sees the arc of the relationship, not just the last visit.

Everything in the pastoral care module is confidential: only users with the care team or pastor role can open it. Member profiles in the general directory show no trace of care activity, and there is no route by which a fellow member, administrator, or volunteer sees pastoral notes that are not theirs to see.

When a need is beyond one pastor’s capacity or falls into a specialist’s area, it can be assigned to another care team member. The assigned person sees it in their queue and is responsible for the next follow-up. Reassignment is tracked so there is always an owner.

When a care need is resolved — a member recovers, a counselling journey concludes, a crisis passes — the case is closed with a closing note. Closed cases remain in the record as historical context and can be reopened if the need returns. Leadership can review care activity over a period to understand the pastoral load the team is carrying.