Once your church website is set up and you have a few leaders in place, the next step is bringing in your members. The member app is where regular attendees engage day-to-day: join groups, give online, request prayer, RSVP to events, read sermons.
How to invite people
Most churches use a mix of the methods below.
Import a spreadsheet
Best when you have an existing member list (a CSV from your old system, an Excel sheet from the church office). The importer is its own tool, separate from the People page.
- Open Settings → Import Data. It is an admin tool.
- Upload your CSV and confirm the column mapping.
- Review the preview, then commit.
Imported people land in People as pending, with no login, and nobody is emailed. That is on purpose: you decide who to invite and when. See Bring your people across for what comes across and what does not.
To invite an imported person, open them from People and use Resend invite at the bottom of their record. There is no "invite everyone" button, so work through them in batches. They can also sign up on their own with the same email address, and their imported record is picked up.
Share your join link
If you don't have a clean member list, share your member join link. Members type their own info.
You will find it, with a QR code you can print for the bulletin, under Settings → Member Portal Settings, in the Member join link card. On the web, the join form lives at https://{yourslug}.easychurchapp.com/join (or your custom domain followed by /join). Turn on Allow new member signups on that same settings page first, or the link will not work.
Send it to your full email list, post it on Facebook, print the QR code in the bulletin. New signups appear in People. Some wait under the Pending tab for you to approve or block them; see the approval section below for which.
Manual, one at a time
For the church secretary or pastor inviting people individually after a Sunday service:
- People → Invite Member.
- Enter their email, and their name if you have it.
- Click Send Invitation.
They get an email to choose a password. Once they accept they are active automatically, and you do not need to approve them. Until they do, they show as Invite sent.
What members can do once they sign in
- See the list of groups and request to join one.
- Read the sermon archive, the same one the public site has.
- Give online, if your church is on a paid plan.
- Submit a prayer request.
- RSVP to events and get reminder notifications.
- Update their own profile: phone, photo, family info, communication preferences.
Auto-approve vs. manual approval
How a new person is approved depends on how they got in:
- Invited by you (Invite Member, or Resend invite): they are active as soon as they accept. You do not approve them.
- Signed up on your web join form: they always wait under the Pending tab in People until you (or any admin or editor) click Approve. This keeps spam signups from appearing as legit members.
- Signed up in the app by finding your church: they are active straight away while there is room in your plan, because Auto-approve new members is switched on by default. Switch it off in Settings → Member Portal Settings and they wait under Pending too.
The Auto-approve switch is the same one as Auto-adjust at approval on the Billing page, so as your church grows past a plan's limit, approving people can move you to the next bracket. Switching it off means you decide, one approval at a time.
What's the difference between a "member" and a "follower"?
That distinction belongs to groups, not to your church as a whole. In a group, a member is on the roster. A follower keeps up with the group without being on its roster. See Join requests for how it works.