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Planning Center Help

Chat in Church Center

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Use chat in Church Center to discuss changes to events, prayer requests, and personal updates with your groups or service teams!

You won't see the chat icon or receive chat notifications if you don't have permission to start a conversation, you're not part of an existing conversation, or you're under the age of 13.

You can set your chat notification preferences in the Church Center mobile app.

Tip

Service team members can participate in both group and service team chat conversations using the Services mobile app.

Start a new conversation with your group

Your church administrators must enable chat for your group. They can allow either the group leaders or both leaders and members to begin a new conversation. 

  1. Select the 💬 chat icon. 

  2. Select the ✏️ pencil icon in the top right.

  3. Choose Group.

  4. Select the group to start the conversation with.

  5. Add a title for the conversation.

  6. Select Start conversation.

  7. Type your message.

  8. Select the up arrow icon to send your message.

Warning

Each group can have up to 100 conversations. When the 101st conversation starts, the oldest conversation is removed and cannot be recovered.

Start a new conversation with your team

If you are a service team leader, you can start a team or plan-specific conversation in Church Center. To start a conversation:

  1. Select the 💬 chat icon.

  2. Select the ✏️ pencil icon in the top right.

  3. Choose Team.

  4. In the Teams I lead section, select a service type to see teams within that service type.

  5. Select or deselect teams within that type.

  6. (Optional) Use the Filter by plan toggle and select the date in the dropdown to include only team members scheduled for a specific date.

  7. Select Start conversation.

  8. Type your message.

  9. Select the up arrow icon to send your message.

Respond to messages

You can reply to, copy, report, or react to other people's messages, as well as edit or delete your own messages.

  • Press and hold someone else's message to select a reaction emoji, reply to, copy, or report the message.

  • Press and hold your own message to select a reaction emoji, reply to, copy, edit, view read receipts, or delete the message.

  • Select the 📎 attachment icon to use your device's camera or to select an image from your photo library.

  • Select the ⚡️ lightning bolt icon to search for a GIF to share in your chat.

  • Select the three dots icon next to someone else's message to reply to or report the message.

  • Select the three dots icon next to your own message to edit or delete the message.

  • Select the 🙂 emoji icon next to a message to add an emoji reaction.

  • Select the 📎 attachment icon to use your device's camera or to select an image from your photo library.

  • Select the ⚡️ lightning bolt icon to search for a GIF to share in your chat.

Filter conversations

If you belong to multiple teams or groups, you may want to filter your view to find and focus on particular conversations. The filter options you see depend on the types of conversations you’re a part of.

Tip

You can also view all conversations for a specific group by selecting the 💬 chat icon at the top of the page while viewing the group.

Manage conversations

Role

Abilities

Everyone

  • Mute chat conversation for themselves.

  • View the list of conversation members.

  • React to conversations that have been set to leader messages only.

  • Delete their own messages.

Leaders and

Conversation owners

  • Edit a conversation title.

  • Set a conversation to leader messages only.

  • Send messages and reactions in conversations set to leader messages only.

  • Delete all messages.

  • Delete a conversation.