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Member Types let you categorise the people in your directory by their relationship to the church — from first-time visitor through to committed member. Once people are categorised, you can filter your directory by member type and use those filters to target bulk emails, SMS messages, and reports to exactly the right group.
The default member types
On first install, Church Admin includes two member types — Mailing List and Member. If you import contacts via CSV, everyone is assigned to Mailing List by default, giving you a starting point to refine from.
How member types work in practice
Member types work best when they reflect the natural stages of someone’s journey into your church. Here’s an example of how one church uses them:
- Visitor — someone who has attended once and filled in a welcome card; they receive a “thanks for coming” follow-up and are added to the system
- Regular Attender — someone who has been coming consistently but hasn’t yet formally joined
- Member — someone who has attended a joining day and become a full member of the church
- Mailing List — people connected to the church who receive communications but aren’t regular attenders
With these types set up, you can do things like send a Christmas or Easter invitation email to everyone on the Visitor list — people who’ve been before and might come back for a special occasion — without having to manually select them each time.
Finding member type management
Go to Church Admin → People → Member types to see all your current types, reorder them, and add new ones.
Adding a new member type
Go to Church Admin → People → Add member type, or click the Add Member Type button from the member types list. Fill in the name and any description, then click Save member type.
Reordering member types
On the member types list, the order can be changed by dragging and dropping. The order here controls the order they appear in dropdown menus across the plugin, so it’s worth arranging them in a logical progression — typically from least to most engaged.
Moving people between member types
You can move an individual’s member type by editing their person record. If you need to move a large group of people at once — for example, moving everyone currently on the Mailing List to Visitor after a big outreach event — use the bulk move option on the member types screen to reassign them in one go.
Using member types for filtering and communications
Member types are one of the key filter options in the People directory. Once you’ve filtered by a member type, that filtered list becomes your audience for a bulk email or SMS — making it easy to send targeted communications to exactly the right group without manual selection.
See Address list filtering for how to combine member type with other filters for more precise targeting.
Member types vs People types
It’s worth understanding the difference between the two:
- Member type — describes someone’s relationship or engagement with the church (Visitor, Regular Attender, Member, and so on). You define these yourself.
- People type — describes the person’s life stage (Adult, Teenager, Child). See People types.
Both can be used as filter criteria and both appear on person records — they serve different purposes and work well together.