Washington Street UMC’s membership database is a user-friendly solution called Realm®. This program offers some exciting opportunities to support the way you, as church members, can be involved and connect with fellow Washington Streeters. Realm® makes it easy for our church family to connect with each other, keep up with what’s going on, and grow as a connected community. You are able to determine how much you want to make this part of your experience with our church, but we encourage you to take advantage of all of the ways Realm® helps you to connect with your Washington Street family.
The easiest way for people to access Realm® is with their mobile devices. Download the CONNECT app and stay connected to our church wherever you go. Use it to communicate with your committees, groups, and teams. RSVP and register for events, manage your giving, update your own profile information, and more. It will make it easier for us all to connect throughout the week and know what’s happening.
• News—Keeps everyone up-to-date with the latest posts, photos, and events for your group and for the church as a whole
• Posts—Post messages to your group and comment on posts by others in your group
• Photos—Capture your moments together and share them with your group
• Events—See event details (date, time, location, etc), submit your RSVP or registration, and sign up to bring something
• Files —Access your group’s shared files
• Messages—Send your entire group, or select individuals, a message that starts a conversation
• Participants—See names and basic profile details for the people in our church, your committee, or group, based on their privacy preferences
• Notification Settings—Manage your preferences for group notifications and emails.
Update Your Profile
Everyone in our church gets a unique profile. Your profile will contain everything you want people in our church to know about you. Your profile also enables you to join a small group, RSVP or register for events, track your giving, update your contact information, change family details, set notification preferences, or replace that outdated family photo. By keeping your information current, you are helping our staff, group leaders, and our church community.
Your Profile includes:
• Contact Information (e.g. name, address, email, phone) — You can decide what data you want to hide online by setting your privacy preferences.
• Photo
• Family Members
• Personal Information (e.g. marital status, birthday, etc.) — Feel free to enter your full birthday. The year and your age will not be displayed on your church directory profile.
• Connected Social Media accounts
Watch a short video about Profiles
Groups and classes are an important part of our church, and now you can connect with the people in them throughout the week. You can keep track of upcoming meetings, who’s bringing what, and what’s going on in each other’s lives.
Learn more about Groups
Giving
Review your giving history or make new donations online or on your mobile phone. Simply sign in to look over your year-to-date giving, check pledge progress, print a contribution statement, or make a new one-time or recurring donation. It’s always available and kept secure in an easy-to-use online environment.
Register for an Event
View upcoming church events and register for the ones you’d like to attend. If an event’s registration requires payment, you’ll see its cost, any required deposit amount, acceptable forms of payment, and its no-refund date, if applicable. You can also manage your active registrations and see any outstanding balances.
Notes About Privacy
1. You have complete control over who can see your contact and personal information.
2. Contact information is never public or searchable on the Internet. Any information you elect to make visible to your church family is always protected behind a login.
3. Authorized staff will always have access to your profile information.
4. You and certain authorized staff may update your profile information. In some cases, your group leader may update your contact information if you have made it visible to group leaders. 5. For safety reasons, sharing contact and personal information for children under 18 is limited. Parents determine whether or not to display their child’s name in the church directory.
6. Children under 13 may not participate and will not be able to sign in.
What People May See
By default, the viewing of your contact and personal information is limited to members of groups you are in, group leaders, and staff members. If you choose to, however, you can make your information visible to the entire church. But if you prefer to be more private, you can customize how people see specific information.
Contact Information: Name, Address, Phones, and Email;
Personal Information: Marital Status, Family Position, Member Status
But you also have the option of sharing your birthday, gender, allergy information, and skills with people in your church. If you are a group leader or host an event, certain contact informa[on may be visible regardless of the settings you choose.
Privacy Settings
Everyone—Like a church directory listing, everyone in our church will be able to see whatever profile information is marked as visible to everyone.
My Groups + Group Leaders + Church Staff—This setting means the information will only be shared with the people you are involved with at church. This is the default setting.
Group Leaders + Church Staff—You would use this setting if you wanted to keep some profile information hidden from anyone who is not a group leader or on staff.
Church Staff Only—This setting effectively removes you from the church directory. Your information will only be available to authorized church staff.
Custom Privacy—Choose different privacy levels for specific contact fields and personal information. You can do this in two places: when you edit your profile information or when you manage your privacy settings.
While you can hide the majority of your information from most of the church, you should know that, regardless of your settings, contact data will still be visible to certain members of the church staff. The Directory page shows all individuals who have a login, along with individuals without a login who have been opted-in to the directory. Currently, individuals with a login cannot opt-out of being listed in the directory.
Family Privacy
A family member with a primary position such as “Head” or “Spouse” can change privacy settings for other members of the family and opt family members into the church directory. Birthdays are required for children (as a means to prohibit access), but it’s up to you if you want to share the birth date with your church family.
Questions? Contact Robbie Douglas at [email protected], or Jane Peterson at [email protected].