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People Overview

The People module is the foundation of GatherCMS. It stores profile records for everyone in your congregation — members, guests, volunteers, and staff — and connects those records to login accounts, households, and your Planning Center database.

Two Ways to Use People​

The People module works differently depending on where you are:

  • Staff Portal — Church staff and administrators can view, create, and edit profiles for anyone in the congregation. This is where you manage your full contact directory, create login accounts, and oversee your membership data.
  • GatherCMS — Church members can view and update their own profile information. Adults can also manage their household members. Members only see their own record, not the full directory.

Core Concepts​

  • Profile — The primary record for a person in your church. A profile stores someone's name, email address, gender, birthday, and anniversary. Every person in your congregation has a profile.
  • User Account — A login credential tied to a profile. Not every profile has a user account. A user account is created separately when you want to give someone access to GatherCMS. See User Accounts.
  • Planning Center — The source of truth for your People data. Profiles are created and updated in Planning Center and sync automatically into GatherCMS. See Planning Center Integration.

What Staff Can Do​

  • Browse and search all profiles in the congregation.
  • Create a new profile manually.
  • View and edit a profile's details.
  • Create a login account from a profile.
  • Enable or disable a person's login access.
  • Assign roles to a user account.

What Members Can Do in GatherCMS​

  • View their own profile.
  • Update their own name, email address, gender, birthday, and anniversary.

Getting Started​