Documentation
Pastoral Care
Support your congregation through life's seasons with tools designed for compassionate, confidential, and consistent pastoral care.
Quick Summary: Relius Pastoral Care helps you track care needs, manage prayer requests, log counseling sessions, and proactively identify members who may need support—all while maintaining strict confidentiality.
Overview
Pastoral care is the heart of ministry. When someone loses a loved one, faces a health crisis, or struggles with life's challenges, they need to know their church family is there for them. But in a growing congregation, keeping track of who needs care—and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks—becomes increasingly difficult.
Relius Pastoral Care provides a secure, centralized system for managing all aspects of congregational care. From documenting hospital visits to coordinating prayer chains, everything is organized and accessible to authorized staff while maintaining the confidentiality that pastoral care requires.
With AI-powered insights, you can also identify members who may be at risk of disengagement or struggling silently—giving you the opportunity to reach out proactively rather than reactively.
Core Features
Care Notes →
Document pastoral visits, counseling sessions, and follow-ups with confidential notes tied to member profiles.
Prayer Requests →
Receive, organize, and share prayer requests with your prayer team while respecting privacy preferences.
At-Risk Detection →
AI-powered alerts identify members who may need extra care based on attendance, giving, and engagement patterns.
Additional Capabilities
Hospital & Home Visits
Track visit requests, schedule pastoral visits, and log outcomes for continuity of care.
New Member Follow-up
Automated workflows ensure every new member receives personal outreach within their first weeks.
Pastoral Insights
AI-powered sentiment analysis helps you understand the emotional tone of communications.
🔒 Privacy & Confidentiality
Pastoral care information is among the most sensitive data in your church. Relius provides multiple layers of protection:
- Role-based access: Only authorized pastoral staff can view care notes
- Note privacy levels: Mark notes as private (pastor-only) or shared (care team)
- Audit logging: Track who accessed sensitive information and when
- Prayer request privacy: Members control whether requests are shared publicly, with prayer team only, or kept private
Getting Started
- Set up your care team: In Administration → User Management, assign the "Pastoral Care" role to staff members who should have access to care notes.
- Configure privacy settings: Decide your default privacy levels for notes and prayer requests in Settings → Pastoral Care.
- Enable AI insights (optional): If you have the AI Pro plan, enable at-risk detection to receive proactive alerts.
- Train your team: Review the documentation with your pastoral staff to ensure consistent note-taking and follow-up practices.
Best Practices
Document promptly
Log care notes within 24 hours of visits or conversations while details are fresh. Brief notes are better than no notes.
Set follow-up reminders
When you create a care note, always set a follow-up date. Consistent follow-through is what makes pastoral care meaningful.
Review at-risk alerts weekly
Schedule time each week to review AI-flagged members. Not every alert needs action, but patterns over time reveal who needs attention.
Respect boundaries
If someone asks for a prayer request to remain private, honor that. Trust is the foundation of effective pastoral care.