Church Records
Church Records are located on the Regional program menu Program → Regional → Church Records. Like Address and Individual Records, Church Records have list, field, phone, and email maintenance functions. Notices are also available for Church Records.
Church Records are similar to address records in that they house name and address information for churches. CDM+ Regional provides two address options, mailing address and physical address. The Physical Address section provides a checkbox to indicate that the physical address is the same as the address entered on the Mailing Address section.
Permission
Access to church records and reports is controlled in the Regional section of the Users tab in Administration.
Church Codes
Mailing Code provides a field to code churches according to a mailing preference.
Section provides a way to group churches geographically.
Code values for these fields are set in the Master Coding System. The field names can be changed in System Preferences, allowing these fields to be repurposed.
Information
The Information box by default contains fields that can be assigned a purpose by changing the field names in the System Preferences. The Information fields are free text and number fields.
Use caution when renaming these fields. Customized subversions of CDM+ Regional assign names and purpose to some of these fields based on denominational requirements.
Phones and Emails
Church Records store phone numbers and email addresses using the Phones and Email tabs, like Address and Individual Record. The Phones and Email tab on Church Records do not have the Individual column. The contact numbers are only associated with the Church Record, not households or individuals. They use the same phone and email types for Address and Individual Records in the Master Coding System.
Giving Units
CDM+ Regional records donations from churches by allowing Giving Unit Records to be related either to Church Records or to Address Records. The giving units for a church--the congregation, not its members--can be viewed on the Giving Unit tab.
Jump Buttons
If a Church Record has connections to Address, Individual, and Giving Unit Records, these jump buttons will be available in the GO section of the sidebar.
Congregation Checkbox
On the Address tab of Church Records, the Congregation checkbox, when checked, indicates that the selected church record describes an active congregation. The default simple find filter for Church Records allows records with the Congregation box checked to appear on simple finds. Put another way, Church Records where the Congregation box is unchecked will not appear in results from a Show All or other simple find.
The name of the checkbox can be changed on System Preferences in CDM+ Regional.
Members and Past Members
The Church Records window contains two tabs, Members and Past Members, that display the connection between churches and individuals in the CDM+ Regional database.
The Individual Record in CDM+ Regional contains a Church tab. On the Church tab an individual can be connected with one or more churches. The connection may include any position(s) held in the church along with beginning an ending dates.
Individuals with a connection to the selected Church Record without an end date specified will show on the Members tab.
Individuals with a connection to the selected Church Record that does have an end date specified will show on the Past Members tab.
On both tabs, double-clicking an individual's name will jump to that Individual Record.
By maintaining full and accurate data on the Members and Past Members tabs, a judicatory can reference not only current membership in a congregation but also the history of leadership in the congregation.