When someone’s in the hospital, the meals organize themselves.
Care trains with claimable slots, prayer chains that cover the hours, share links that work for neighbours and family who’ll never download your app, and follow-ups with a name next to every one.
Care is the thing churches are best at and worst at coordinating.
The willingness is never the bottleneck. The bottleneck is one deacon holding the entire list in their head and their text messages.
Four lasagnas on Tuesday
And nothing at all on Thursday, because the sign-up was a reply-all thread.
Prayer requests that evaporate
Said out loud on Tuesday, remembered by nobody on Wednesday.
The family nobody knew about
Three weeks into something hard before it reached anyone who could help.
Care & Prayer, in detail.
One care train, three ways to help
Open a care train for a family (a new baby, a surgery, a loss) with their story, a photo, and a named coordinator. Then switch on the kinds of help that actually fit: meals, prayer, funds, or all three. One page, one link, one live picture of what’s covered.
- Meals: dates and slots per date, drop-off instructions, and dietary notes in front of the person cooking
- Gift cards instead of cooking: supporters who can’t cook buy from vendors you’ve listed, and it counts toward the same meal
- Prayer: run it as a wall, or as a prayer chain where people claim a date and a time slot until the hours are covered
- Funds: a goal, a deadline, and your church’s own giving methods: Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, Zeffy, or one you define
- Care is its own permission scope: grant it to your deacons, not to everyone
A link that works for people outside your church
The neighbour, the sister-in-law, the coworker who wants to bring a meal: they should not have to make an account to do a kind thing. Every care train has a public share link that lets anyone claim a slot from their phone, no login, no download.
- A public share link per care train
- Non-members can claim a slot without an account
- Share it in a text, a Facebook post, or an email. It just works
Prayer requests, captured where they’re said
If you run Groups, requests get logged in one tap during the group meeting, on the phone that’s already in the leader’s hand, and then they’re there all week instead of dissolving on the drive home.
- One-tap capture inside the group meeting, with Groups
- Requests stay with the group that carries them
- Never scored, never gamified, never turned into a metric
And a quiet answer to “who are we missing?”
Follow-ups give every person who needs a call a named person to make it, with a log of each touchpoint. Care insights show which families the church has actually shown up for. It’s the least glamorous screen in the product and probably the most pastoral one.
- Care insights, alongside attendance and group engagement when you run Groups
- Follow-ups assigned to one person, with every touchpoint logged
- With Groups, first-time guests from Sunday check-in land on the follow-up list
The rest of what Care does.
Where this connects
Care works on its own, on free Core. Add any of these when you need them (every product shares one directory and one permission system), or get them all with Churchory One.
Churchory Care is care ministry software for churches: meal trains with dietary notes and gift-card options, prayer chains that cover the hours, a public share link for helpers outside the church, and follow-ups assigned to a named person. It's $99 a year (or $25 a month) on its own, or part of Churchory One.
What problem does Care solve?
Churches are good at caring and bad at coordinating it. One deacon holds the list in their head, the meal sign-up is a reply-all thread that produces four lasagnas on Tuesday and nothing on Thursday, and a family can be three weeks into something hard before it reaches anyone who can help.
How does it work?
Open a care train
Create a care train for a family (a new baby, a surgery, a loss) with their story, a coordinator, and the kinds of help that fit: meals, prayer, funds, or all three.
Set up meals
Add dates and slots, drop-off instructions and dietary notes. Supporters who can't cook can send a gift card from DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Instacart, Amazon or Walmart, counted toward the same meal.
Share the link
Every care train has a public share link, so neighbours, relatives and co-workers can claim a slot without an account.
Cover the hours in prayer
Run a prayer chain where people claim a date and time slot until the hours are covered, or a simpler prayer wall.
Follow up
Assign each follow-up to one person and log every touchpoint. With Sunday, first-time guests from Sunday check-in land on the follow-up list.
Common situations
A family has a new baby and needs meals
Open a meal train for the next three weeks, add dietary notes, and share the link in the app and by text; the calendar fills without anyone maintaining it.
A member is in surgery tomorrow morning
Start a prayer chain for the hours of the operation and share it; people claim slots until every hour is covered.
A first-time guest visited on Sunday
With Sunday, they appear on the follow-up list; assign a welcome call to a named person and log it when it's done.
Someone hasn't been seen in two months
Care insights show households with no contact in a while, so a quiet absence gets a call instead of being noticed too late.
What should you expect during setup?
You can open your first care train the day you start; there is nothing to import. Decide who coordinates care (often deacons or a care team) and give them the Care area in their role. If you also run Groups or Sunday, Care uses their attendance to surface who might need a call.
Who uses it?
More questions
Can people outside our church sign up to bring a meal?
Yes. Every care train has a public share link; anyone can claim a slot without an account.
Can someone send a gift card instead of cooking?
Yes. Supporters can send a gift card from vendors such as DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Instacart, Amazon or Walmart, and it counts toward the same meal.
Can we collect money for a family?
Yes. A care train can include a fund with a goal and deadline, using your church's own giving methods such as Zelle, Venmo, PayPal or one you define.
Who can see care requests?
Only people whose role includes Care, so you can give it to deacons or a care team and no one else.
Does Care need Groups?
No. Care works on its own; with Groups or Sunday it also uses their attendance to flag people who may need a call.
Does each product work on its own?
Yes. Every product runs on Core by itself except Retreat Builder, which needs Events because every retreat is an event. Products light up extra features when you own them together: Groups plus Chat gives each group its own channel, Sunday plus Care puts first-time guests on the follow-up list, and Events plus Newsletters pulls upcoming events into a newsletter.
How does Churchory help us notice people drifting away from groups?
Leaders take attendance in seconds and get reminded when they forget, and with Care added, someone who misses three meetings in a row prompts a drafted check-in note for their leader to send. Staff see which groups are healthy and which are quietly emptying.
How does Sunday check-in work for adults?
Your welcome team checks people in at the door or takes a headcount, and Sunday records who came, how many, and who's new, week over week. With Care, first-time guests from Sunday check-in land on the follow-up list.
Does Churchory use AI?
Yes, for first drafts only: Churchory prepares things like a check-in note when someone has missed three group meetings, an ask to volunteers who are free when a team is short, or an event recap, and then waits. Nothing goes to anyone until a person reads it and presses send. AI features are in beta.