For the first year of our StewardTrack rollout, our care team kept pastoral notes in the emergency contact area of the member record. It was convenient. It was also wrong.
Here is the rule we eventually landed on: the Members module is for identifying information and ministry assignments. Pastoral care — the sensitive, sometimes heartbreaking story of what is actually going on in someone's life — belongs in the Care Plans module. Two separate tools, two separate audiences.
What stays on the member record
- Identity, contact, address
- Family relationships
- Serving team, role, schedule
- Giving tier and fund preferences
- Spiritual gifts and ministry interests
- Emergency contact and physician (in the Care tab)
What moves to Care Plans
- Pastoral notes on specific situations
- Prayer requests and follow-up
- Testimony details shared in confidence
- Anything the person would not want their small-group admin to read in passing
Why this discipline matters
In a church of more than about 150 people, the list of "admins who can see the member record" grows beyond the pastoral team. Deacons help with serving assignments. Volunteer coordinators pull reports. If sensitive notes sit in the member record, you are one casual export away from breaking trust.
StewardTrack's data explorer, for example, intentionally excludes pastoral notes, prayer requests, and emergency contact details from its exportable dataset. That is not an accident. It is a design decision. We should operate our teams the same way.
Keep identity in Members. Keep care in Care Plans. Your future self will thank you.
Disclaimer: This story is fictional and is shared for illustrative purposes only. The churches, people, events, quotes, and statistics described are not real. It was written to showcase features and workflows available in StewardTrack.
