Elder

Your Elder workspace

An Elder workspace on your own login. Name your church, invite up to 30 individuals or families (pooled across all your church’s subscribed elders, so capacity scales with the eldership), and see what each member explicitly consents to share.

The pooled, church-wide view

Every subscribed elder of your church shares the same pooled view: the church-wide picture of gifts and callings that feeds your Annual Plan. It is a high-level, aggregate picture — never personal dossiers.

Communications

Reach the saints straight from the workspace — write once and send by email or SMS, or attach a calendar meeting invite. Recipients are drawn automatically from the members who have consented and opted in to each channel; you never see an address or number (it's all sent server-side), and every message carries a one-tap opt-out.

• ✓Group email and SMS, with ready-made presets — meeting invite, prayer meeting, survey reminder, general notice
• ✓Meeting invites with a calendar file saints tap to add to their own calendar
• ✓Per-channel opt-in — each saint chooses email and/or SMS, and can opt out any time
• ✓Your deacon can send on the eldership's behalf; every send is logged for transparency

A deacon to share the load

Deacons are administrators who support the elders in organising.

They are trusted, selected saints — drawn from the eldership and the Five-Fold ministry and released into a supporting role — so that pastors and elders can stay focused on shepherding.

Carrying the administrative and operational burden is itself critical work: coordinating hundreds of people through the annual planning process is a real load, and it is meant to be shared (Acts 6:1–4).

• ✓Each elder may nominate one deacon, at no extra charge, who signs in with their own personal email
• ✓A deacon sees the same church view as the elder they assist — and can invite members, send reminders, and keep details current on the eldership's behalf
• ✓Billing and opening or closing the account always stay with the elder
• ✓Every action is recorded under the deacon's own account, so accountability is never blurred

Consent & privacy

• ✓Members choose what they share, and can revoke at any time
• ✓Member information is read-only for elders — nothing personal can be downloaded, printed, or exported
• ✓No member ever sees another member’s information
• ✓Printable outputs exist only for the annual planning process and team allocation

Proxy Support — witness and oversee it

A shepherd wants to know his whole flock, not only the part that is comfortable online. Proxy Support brings the saints who can't use a computer into the same gifts picture as everyone else — often your oldest and most seasoned members — so no one is left behind and your view of the flock is complete.

It lets such a saint take part through a trusted, consented helper, and it is free for the saint.

Your part, as an elder, is the safeguard at its heart: you confirm in person that the saint freely understands and agrees before it begins, and you oversee the arrangements in your church.

From your workspace you see who is helping whom, review the line-by-line record of everything done on a saint's behalf, re-confirm the witness each year, and can end any arrangement. You can also set one up on a saint's behalf, since some need help even to begin.

• ✓Witness a saint's consent in person — the two-gate safeguard that activates it
• ✓Oversee every active arrangement, with a full audit record you can review
• ✓Re-confirm the yearly witness, or end an arrangement at any time
• ✓The feature is free to the saint; your Elder workspace is where it's witnessed and watched over

The ten-week Discovery Course — yours to run

The whole framework, taught over ten weeks in small groups on a weeknight, led by you.

It is how a church walks the journey together rather than one person at a time: the saints discern their gifts in weeks 1–5, and the church learns the pattern it is being called into in weeks 6–10.

It ends at Pentecost — consecration, and the sending.

• ✓Ten sessions, written and ready: the Vision; a Royal Priesthood; Discerning Your Gifts; Gifts and Calling; Confirmed in Community; No Senior Anyone; the Household; Sent to the World; Christ the Head; Pentecost
• ✓The Facilitator Guide — how to lead each session, what to ask, where to wait on the Lord rather than fill the silence (Word download)
• ✓The Course Guidance Notes — the eldership's brief: what the course is for, what it will surface, and what to do with what it surfaces (Word download)
• ✓The Participant Workbook is free to every member — nobody has to buy anything to take part
• ✓Week 5 is deliberately left open: nothing is confirmed that night. Leaders gather what the saints have shared and carry it away to pray over, because it is the Lord who builds His Church (Matthew 16:18)
• ✓What the course surfaces — confirmed gifts and callings — feeds straight into the annual plan, and on to a signed Ministry Works Agreement
• ✓Running it as a Sunday preaching series instead? The full “Before the Fire” sermon packs and PowerPoint decks come with Engaged Church.

Downloads included

The printable 18-Gifts field guide, the offline assessment workbook, and the survey benchmark packs — plus the full leadership templates library, listed below. (The compiled volume PDFs are free to everyone with an account; you don’t need this subscription for the teaching.)

Annual Plan templates

• ✓Aggregated Gifts Summary
• ✓Current-Programs Review
• ✓Workshop Facilitation Guides
• ✓Program Plan
• ✓Annual Prospectus Structure
• ✓Funding Ask Format
• ✓Ministry Works Agreement

Elder & Deacon identification templates

• ✓Candidate Observation Log
• ✓Initial Conversation Guide
• ✓Multi-Month Testing Plan
• ✓Body-Input Form
• ✓Personal Interview Guide
• ✓Family Interview Guide
• ✓Installation guidance
• ✓Stepping-Down Protocol
• ✓Sample Constitutional Language

Five-Fold ministry templates

• ✓Five-Fold Observation Log
• ✓Initial Conversation Guide
• ✓Trial Release Plan
• ✓Commissioning guidance
• ✓Annual Five-Fold Ministry Review
• ✓Itinerant Ministry Engagement Brief
• ✓Bi-Vocational vs Full-Time Discernment Worksheet
• ✓Sample Constitutional Clause on the Five-Fold

Price

$39.95 a month per elder, or $419.40 once a year ($34.95 × 12).