Membership - Misc Notes

Biological Baptism

This Baptism Type is used for anyone 15 years of age or younger, that is baptized after making a profession of faith and has at least one parent who, at that time, has been a church member for more than 1 year. If you are using the automated business rules associated with membership, the system will set this type at the time the child’s baptism is recorded as completed based on the indicators described. Anyone with this Baptism Type will be assigned a Join Type of Baptism BIO one he completes his membership process. This special category helps churches identify children of existing members (those raised in the church), versus children that come to the church more independently.

Business Rules

These are the rules that govern the automated work flow for the membership process. If your church does not want to use the automated business rules, your TouchPoint Admin can turn those off. Also, if you church does not want to use all of the business rules for membership, but would like the portion that relates to a deceased person, you can have those business rules added to your database.

Deceased Members

When someone dies, if you are using the automated membership business rules, just enter a Deceased Date on the person’s Personal tab. When you save the changes the system will handle the necessary changes behind the scenes.

New Member Class

This is a requirement built into the automated membership process. It can be completed either by being marked as Attended or given a status of Admin Approval or Child Exempt.

For churches that use the business rules, but do not require a New Member Class, they can assign new members a status of Admin Approval for this class.

Subsequent Baptism

This baptism type is used for a church member who asks to be baptized realizing that they were saved after they had been baptized originally.

To record this, change the Baptism Type to Subsequent, and enter the date of their subsequent baptism.

Note

At our church, we do not record this as a new Decision or change any of the current membership information. We just record the actual baptism.

If you want to record the Scheduled Date of the baptism, be sure to change the Baptism Type to Subsequent, then change the Status to Scheduled and enter the Scheduled date in the Scheduled Date field. Then, once the baptism has taken place, change the Status to Completed and enter the date.