Your Faithlife Church Group is the hub that connects all the tools in Faithlife Equip. You set one up when you signed up for Equip. To find your church group, go to Faithlife.com, sign in, and select it in the left-hand Groups panel.

Login to Faithlife.com

Your group serves two functions: 1) an online community for your congregation and 2) a central managing hub for your staff.

To follow these steps, make sure you’re first viewing your church group on Faithlife.com (login and select your church group in the left-hand Groups sidebar).

1.1 Set up group profile and settings.

Add a profile image for your group from your homepage:

• Click the camera icon on your group profile image.
• Upload a profile photo (1024px by 1024px is recommended).

Add a header image for your group from your homepage:

• Click the camera icon on your group header image.
• Upload a header image (2560px by 500px is recommended).

Note: Learn more about recommended image sizes.

Next, add contact and group details:

• Expand Settings in the left-hand Admin panel of your church group.
• Choose Group Settings to add contact information, and other important group details.

Need more detailed help? Click here.

1.2. Set up group privacy and permissions.

You control who can see and interact with your group information and content.

• Expand Settings in the left-hand Admin panel of your church group.
• Choose Features and Permissions.
• Determine how visible your group appears on Faithlife.com and set specific privacy levels for content in your group.

Need more detailed help? Click here.

1.3. Add initial content.

We recommend creating some calendar events, creating an automated welcome newsletter, pinning a welcome post to your Activity feed, personalizing the group sidebar, and more. Adding some initial content not only pre-populates your group with helpful content for your users, it also offers information to your other Faithlife products (e.g., when you create your Faithlife Site, it will automatically pull in your created calendar items). 

1.4. Assign team members.

You don’t have to complete all six steps by yourself. Assign admins and other team leads to collaborate on your website, online giving, and more!

Teams are subgroups of your main church group. They provide special permissions to members to manage the church’s website (i.e., Faithlife Sites), presentations (i.e., Proclaim Presentation Team), finances (i.e., Giving Finance Team), and more. Start by inviting your team members to their respective teams. Inviting others to join you engages their help as you serve your church and community through Faithlife Equip. Need more detailed help?

• Finance Team: invite your team as members of your Finance Team so they can help manage your Faithlife Giving experience.
• Presentation Team: invite your team as members to your Proclaim presentation team.
• Website Team: invite those who manage your site as moderators of your Faithlife church group.

Note: Each group, subgroup, and team has its own members, settings, permissions, and page. This separation gives you complete control over who controls what in your group. For example, many pastors don’t want to see who gives to the church, so we recommend the pastor not be invited to the Finance Team, though the Pastor can remain an Admin of the church group.

 

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Additional Faithlife Groups Training and Resources

For more detailed training on groups, view groups video training, visit the full groups support center, or select one of the popular support articles below:

• Configure Group Privacy Settings
• Configure Group Settings and Sidebar
• What Image Dimensions Should I Use on Faithlife?
• Add a Subgroup to Your Church Group
• Using Teams
• Add People to Your Subgroup or Team

Support Video Training

View all groups video training

As an administrator of your church group, you can activate and set up giving in a few minutes. 

2.1. Activate Giving

• Go to your Faithlife church group (go to Faithlife.com, sign in, and select it in the left-hand Groups panel).
• Select Finances in the left-hand Admin panel of your church group.
• Click the blue Activate Giving button in the main window.
• Complete the five-step signup process. (What Information is Required to Complete the Giving Activation Form?)
• Activation usually takes less than 10 minutes.

Once this form is submitted, Faithlife will process the details and immediately activate Giving so you can start accepting donations. If more information is needed, we will connect with the primary contact you provided. The entire process often takes less than ten minutes to complete. Need more detailed help?

Note: For more information on your giving account, check out the Giving Launch Kit located in the Tutorials and other resources section of your Dashboard.

2.2. Learn about your Finance Team.

Once you’ve activated Giving, take a few minutes to get oriented to your Finance Team. Need more detailed help?

Before encouraging your people to give, we recommend at least the following:

• Add fund designations
• Set up text-to-give
• Test the giving experience

2.3. Onboard Your Church.

Once you’re ready to accept gifts, take a few moments to plan your church onboarding. We’ve created videos, guides, bulletin inserts, presentation slides, newsletters, website integration, and more to help you. 

View Onboarding Resources

Note: You can begin encouraging people to give before finishing setting up all Faithlife products. The giving process will encourage your people to begin joining your church group organically so they can track their giving history. When you’re ready to begin formally inviting your congregation to join your church group, many may already be members through Giving, making your job easier.

 

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Additional Faithlife Giving Training and Resources

For more detailed training on Giving, view video training, visit the full giving support center, or select one of the popular support articles below:

• Set Up Faithlife Giving
• Get Oriented to Your Finance Team
• Resources to Onboard Your Church to Faithlife Giving
• Faithlife Giving FAQs
• Set Up Text to Give
• Share Your Giving Form

Faithlife Giving Webinars

 

Proclaim is built for churches. That means the entire platform is customized to help you prepare, present, and share your church services. If you’re just beginning with Proclaim, this guide will direct you to learn the basics.

3.1. Download Proclaim.

You can download Proclaim for Windows or macOS. Your Equip subscription covers everyone on your team, and there are no download or install limits with Proclaim.

3.2. Sign in with your Faithlife account.

When you sign in, Proclaim will link to your church group’s presentation team. Anyone you invite to this team will be able to collaborate with you on building or running presentations. Learn more about assigning people to your Proclaim Presentation team.

3.3. Create your first presentation.

You can quickly create a profession presentation in a couple of minutes. Need more detailed help?

Before sending training to your volunteers, test the experience by going On Air.

3.4. Train your volunteers.

We’ve created a volunteer reference guide that includes a video, steps for common tasks, and a printable PDF. Send it to your team to help train the on how to run your Proclaim presentations.

 

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Additional Faithlife Proclaim Training and Resources

For more detailed training on Proclaim, view video training, visit the full Proclaim support center, or select one of the popular support articles below:

• Get Started with Proclaim
• Volunteer Reference Guide
• Order of Service Overview
• How Do I Add Song Slides to My Presentation?
• Record and Publish Sermons
• How Do I Configure My Display Outputs?

Faithlife Proclaim webinar

 

Faithlife Sites makes creating and maintaining a church website nearly automatic. You don’t have to type a single line of code and your site automatically updates as you add new information. Follow the steps below to create a church website with Faithlife Sites.

4.1. Initial setup.

• Go to your Faithlife church group (go to Faithlife.com, sign in, and select it in the left-hand Groups panel).
• Click on Websites in the left-hand Admin panel of your church group.
• Select the Start your site button.
• Choose a theme (you can change this later). As soon as you choose a theme, Faithlife populates your site with popular church pages, contact information from your Faithlife group, and other church-friendly features. Your site automatically includes church information (e.g., your church logo, contact information, or social media accounts) in Step 1.1.

That’s it! You’re now viewing a draft of your site. Changes you make update in real-time.

4.2. Add content.

You can add content while in Edit mode. To enter edit mode:

• Go to your website and click Sign in (in the top right-hand corner).
• Ensure the toggle at the top of the page is set to Edit.
• Explore adding widgets to your site to show your calendar on your site or publish a members-only page to show private information like your church directory.

4.3. Manage your domain.

Every Faithlife Site has a default domain (your URL) at faithlifesites.com. Your Equip subscription, however, includes three domain options when selecting a domain name for your site. 

1. Choose your own custom domain name.
2. Transfer your domain name to Faithlife and have our Customer Support team manage the configuration for you.
3. Use your existing domain name and point it to your new site.

Learn more about domain name options.

 

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Additional Faithlife Sites Training and Resources

For more detailed training on Sites, view video training, visit the full Sites support center, or select one of the popular support articles below:

• Set Up Your Church Website with Faithlife Sites
• Go Live!
• Website Pages and Menus
• Add Service Times
• Set up Your Visiting Page
• Embed a Custom Form on Your Faithlife Site
• Edit Pages

Faithlife Sites webinar

 

People records let you create, track, and search information about your members. You must be a group admin in order to create or modify people records.

Whenever you invite someone to your church group, manually add a person record, bulk import people records, create a digital connection card, or create a family record, Faithlife will add people records to the People database in the Admin panel of your church group. Since you’re setting up Equip, this section will show you how to bulk import records. 

5.1. Export your .csv file from your old system.

Export your people records from your old system in CSV file format. Faithlife can interpret CSV files from most record management systems but it’s best to clean up your file. Look through the file to make sure all of the data in columns match column headers. To import families, we recommend having a “Family” column in your spreadsheet. Add the family name in that column next to each person in the family. If a family has multiple surnames, separate the names with commas.

5.2. Check your .csv file.

The Faithlife platform is designed to interpret and import your .csv file. While the import process should require minimal work, there are a few things you can do to help avoid data issues. Ensure each column name matches the data below and that each column contains only one piece of information (e.g., separate first and last names), check that each row contains a single person record (rather than a family record), and group families together.

5.3. Import your .csv file to Faithlife

Navigate to your group on Faithlife.com and click People in the Admin panel. Click the more options icon to the right of the Add person button and choose Import from CSV.

Need more detailed help?

Person records provide a way for your organization to add, manage, and query data about individuals in your organization. Only group admins and moderators have access to view or modify person records. Once a person exists in your people records, you can send communication, track your care for them, invite them to your group, and more.

Person Record or Faithlife Profile—What’s the Difference? People records are your church’s administrative records about people connected to your church. Your church creates, owns, and manages those records and they exist whether or not the person has a Faithlife profile or has joined your church group on Faithlife.com. A Faithlife Profile is created, owned, and managed by an individual. You can find your own profile in the top right-hand corner of your browser. When you click your Faithlife Profile avatar, you can customize your profile from the Account Settings dropdown option. Learn more.

 

With the basics of Faithlife Equip setup, you’re ready to invite others to join you! Start by inviting everyone at your church to join your church group.

Note: Those who join your group can access key church information you post (including your digital directory, personalized Faithlife giving history, group Bible reading plans, shared prayer requests, and more) and interact with others in your group.

6.1. Send Invitations.

You can invite people to join your group in several different ways. But since you’ve already created people records for everyone in your church, the easiest place to invite people is directly from the People records.

1. Select People in the Admin panel of your church group.
2. Select all records with the check box above the table.
3. Expand Actions and choose Invite to Faithlife group.
4. This opens an invitation page pre-filled with the contacts who are not yet part of your group. Customize your message and click Invite.

Faithlife will send out invite emails on your behalf. When people accept the invitation, you’ll see a on their person record. Learn more about inviting people to your church group.

6.2. Assign Group Licenses.

Your Equip subscription gives you access to resources for your church, your teams (e.g., On-Air Proclaim subscription), and your pastors. You can manage these resources from the Admin navigation panel (Settings > Licenses).

Your three different license types are assigned in three different ways:

1. Auto-assigned: Some licenses are auto-assigned, like the resources for members of your congregation (e.g., Logos for the church, Faithlife TV, etc.) . You can set these to apply to Followers and higher level permissions or Members and higher level permissions in your group. Learn more about auto-assigned licenses.
2. Manually-assigned: Your Pastoral Premiere License(s) is manually assigned (your number of available licenses depends on your subscription tier). A blue Assign button in the far right column allows you to assign this license to anyone in your group. (Important: Because of our licensing agreements, manually-assigned licenses need to stay with the account to which they’ve been assigned. If you have specific questions about your situation, please contact us at 888–634–2038 or support@faithlife.com.) Learn more about assigning your Pastoral Premiere License.
3. Team-assigned: Some teams provide access to content, like Faithlife Proclaim presentation teams. Because you can share the license with as many people as join your group, they show Unlimited availability. To grant someone access to this content, invite new team members to your team. Learn more about team-assigned licenses.  

6.3. Onboard Your Church.

Equip gives your congregation access to tools and resources to help them grow and connect. Churches have found that carefully planning an onboarding strategy dramatically improves the value they get out of their Faithlife Equip subscription.

Take a few moments to strategize how to introduce Equip to your church. Many churches have found a five or six week roll-out with repeated announcements, regular emails, informational centers in your church lobby, and shared videos increases congregational buy-in. We’ve compiled a page with videos, step-by-step check lists, downloadable bulletin inserts, and other tools to help you choose a path that fits your church.

View Onboarding Resources