Sanctuary Help Center
How can we help?
Step-by-step guides for Sanctuary: setting up your church, people and families in Core, volunteer scheduling in Serve, online giving, children’s check-in and Shepherd.
Getting started
Accounts, setting up a church, joining with a code, moving from Planning Center.
- Intro to Sanctuary — What Sanctuary is, its apps, where to start for your role, and how to move from Planning Center.
- Create your account — Make a personal Sanctuary login with email, Google, or Apple.
- Create or join a church — Found a church on the web, or join an existing one with a code or invite.
- Church codes and invitations — How people get in: the 6-character code, QR, and emailed invitations.
- Move to Sanctuary — Bring your people, families, funds and giving history across from your old system, check everything, then bring it in — with undo until you say it is final.
- Move your people and giving from Planning Center — Migrate from Planning Center: export the right files, then bring your people, households, funds and giving history in with Move to Sanctuary.
Core
People, families, forms, calendar, lists, tasks and mail.
- Intro to Sanctuary Core — The church directory: people, families, forms, calendar, lists, tasks and mail.
- Who can open Core — Grant viewer, editor or admin access. Membership of the church is not enough.
- Adding a person — Create a profile by hand, or let a form, registration or Serve login do it.
- Households and families — Keep people who share a home on one household, with a primary contact.
- Editing a person’s profile — Correct a name or contact details, change their membership type, switch person and business, or delete a profile.
- Membership types — Your church’s own list — Visitor, Regular Attender, Member or whatever you use — on every profile.
- Merging duplicate people — Combine two profiles that are the same person. Core admins only.
- Custom fields — Track what your church tracks — T-shirt size, school, small group — on every profile.
- Milestones — Baptism, membership, a class completed — dated events on a person.
- Building a form — Create a form, add questions, keep it closed until it is ready, then open it.
- Public forms and guest cards — Share a form with people who have never heard of Sanctuary.
- Calendar and events — Create events, book rooms, and publish a public calendar.
- Event registrations — Open sign-up, set capacity, take payment, and see who is coming.
- Sheets and live lists — Save a question about the directory. The list stays current every time you open it.
- Tasks and follow-up — Assign a job to a person, on a person, and see it through.
- Emailing from Core — Write to one person, or design an email in your church’s colour and send it to a sheet — with the free monthly allowance, credits and unsubscribes explained.
- Printed letters and mail — Personalised letters and postcards, laid out for the printer.
- Places and rooms — Rooms and resources the calendar can book, per campus.
Serve
Teams, the rota, service orders, songs and stage displays.
- Intro to Sanctuary Serve — Teams, the rota, service orders, songs and stage displays.
- Onboarding new members — Invite people, share the church code, approve joiners, and put them on a team.
- Removing members — Remove someone from the church without deleting their personal login.
- Creating a team — Set up a team with a chat, feature access, and members.
- Creating a service order — Build the order of service with songs, segments, timing and assignments.
- Using the Matrix — Schedule positions across dates on one grid.
- Managing availability and away dates — Tell schedulers when you cannot serve.
- Accepting or declining a schedule request — What to do when a drop lands on your Serve page.
- Adding a song — Put a song in the church library for orders and stacks.
- Setting up a stage display — Show the live service order on a stage or production screen.
Give
Online giving, Stripe, recurring gifts and statements.
- Intro to Sanctuary Give — Online giving, recurring gifts, statements and reconciliation — on top of Core.
- Connecting Stripe for giving — What to gather, how long it takes, and how to test before you share your giving page. Website only.
- Opening your giving page — Funds, the public /g/ page, and going live.
- Funds, batches and gifts — How money is recorded, including cash and cheques.
- Funds that end — A Christmas offering or a camp fund that closes on a date, and stays in the reports for the years it had gifts.
- Recurring gifts and statements — Monthly giving, failed cards, and year-end statements.
- Text giving — A dedicated number people text to give. Website setup only.
- How people can give — Card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and bank transfer (ACH), recurring gifts, covering the fee, and refunds.
Check-Ins
Stations, label printers, kiosks, family passes and secure pickup.
- Intro to Sanctuary Check-Ins — Kids and event check-in with printed labels, secure pickup and family passes. In early access.
- Label printers that work with Check-Ins — Which printers and labels work, what each needs installed, and what to do when a label will not print.
- Stations, the desk and kiosks — Set up the computers that check people in, choose a primary station, and let families check themselves in.
- First-time families, Family Pass and secure pickup — Let families set up before they arrive, check in with one scan, and collect with a matching check-out code.
Shepherd
Your staff’s AI assistant: what it does, who can use it, its allowance.
- Intro to Shepherd — Sanctuary’s AI assistant for your staff: what it can do, who can use it, and what always waits for a person.
- Shepherd’s monthly allowance and your data — How the monthly allowance is counted, and where your questions go.
Account
Password, campuses, and deleting your login.
- Switch churches or campuses — Move between memberships and campuses you already belong to.
- Reset your password — Get back in when you have forgotten the password.
- Delete your account — Remove your personal login. Required to be as easy as signing up.