Church Admin Plugin

Send Push Message

⭐ Premium

Push messages are notifications sent directly to the phones of people who have the Our Church app installed and have opted in to notifications. They appear on the lock screen like a text message — useful for urgent announcements, service reminders, or time-sensitive news that you want people to see immediately without sending an email or SMS.

Go to Church Admin → Communications → Push messages.

Before you start

Push messages only reach people who have the Our Church app installed on their phone and have granted the app permission to send notifications. People who haven’t installed the app, or who have disabled notifications, will not receive push messages. See Getting started with the app.

Composing a push message

Title

The bold heading that appears on the notification — keep it short and attention-grabbing. On most phones only the first 40–50 characters are visible before the notification is truncated.

Message

The body text of the notification shown below the title. Keep this concise — push notifications are not the place for long announcements. A sentence or two is ideal. If you need to share more detail, put the full information in the app or on your website and use the push message to direct people there.

URL

An optional link that opens when the recipient taps the notification. Use this to direct people to a specific page — a sermon, an event booking page, a news article, or any URL on your website. If left blank, tapping the notification simply opens the app.

Send to

Choose who receives the push message:

  • Everyone — sends to all app users who have notifications enabled
  • Specific person — type a name to search the directory and select an individual. Useful for a personal notification or a test send to yourself before sending to everyone.

Sending

Click Send push message. The notification is delivered immediately to all qualifying devices. The screen confirms how many devices the message was sent to.

Push messages are not stored in the sent emails log — if you need a record of what you sent and when, note it down before sending.

Tips for effective push messages

  • Test before sending to everyone — use the Specific person option to send to yourself first and check how the notification looks on your phone before sending to the whole congregation
  • Use sparingly — push notifications are interruptive by nature. If you send too many, people will disable notifications for the app. Reserve them for genuinely time-sensitive or important messages.
  • Include a URL for longer content — if the announcement needs more than a sentence of explanation, link to the full details rather than trying to fit everything into the notification body
  • Consider the time — push notifications arrive immediately and can wake people up. Avoid sending late at night or early in the morning unless it’s genuinely urgent.

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