Remember groups of people to Record Attendance for

[jefft]

When marking attendances, there are some groups of people we know won't have attended, and want to exclude from the attendance list. Often these are people in certain statuses. The attendance recorder has to remember to select the relevant subset each week:

but other criteria might apply, such as a 'Housebound' custom field.

It would be nice if the "group of people to mark attendance for" could be recorded as a Person report. Then in Record/Display Attendance forms, we could have a select list picking the Person Report to use:

Using a report's output would put the user in charge of sort order, solving #890. We could even display the returned fields from the report, allowing e.g. age-bracket to be selected (#475).

[tbar0970]

Interesting. I get where it's coming from. I normally un-tick all the kids age brackets since I'm only recording attendance for adults. In the screenshot above, the large number of 'status' options make it particularly unweildy.

The original concept of a congregation was "people you expect to show up at X timeslot", with the logic that people you don't expect to attend should be either congregationless contacts, or part of some other congregation (eg we have one called "housebound"). Re-structuring data along these lines would be the simplest solution to this scenario.

If we did introduce a reference to a person report as suggested, we'd need to be clear on whether the attendance was being recorded for congregation or for a certain group.

[simon-KAC]

Hi there,

Just trying to work through this issue and understand the best working solution.

"The original concept of a congregation was "people you expect to show up at X timeslot","

I'm just wrestling with that concept and how to reconcile it with these two scenarios.

Scenario 1: a person who is historically attached to one congregation but has become housebound. Physically, we don't expect attendance from that person for some time but socially and as part of a body, they belong to a specific congregation. We can use the "Satellite Member" status for them and simply untick that when marking the report. That is a work around there. Putting them into a separate "homebound" congregation is another good solution but does affect the relationship with them and their church family. So, we don't expect them to show up but we want to care for them.

Scenario 2: a person who regularly attends two congregations. This means that they are taking part in the culture of two groups of people. I know this has been addressed somewhere else but it is not unusual to have a person as part of more than one congregation. Forcing a person into just one congregation actually makes reporting hard. A leader in two congregations is only registered as being part of one reporting group. I do expect them to show up at the congregation that they cannot be registered for.

I hope this is helpful. I appreciate the work involved in creating a tool like Jethro and I recognise my relative newness to these discussions. I realise I have crossed two issues into the one discussion here. I hope it is clear how they relate.

:)

PS - I have read the notes on #488 and listening.

[jefft]

Thanks for your input @simon-KAC.

Putting them into a separate "homebound" congregation is another good solution but does affect the relationship with them and their church family. So, we don't expect them to show up but we want to care for them.

Curious as to why this is? Does your church have pastoral care responsibilities divided "per congregation", such that marking someone congregation-less has pastoral implications? "Implied pastoral implications" is actually one of the arguments against allowing people in more than one congregation (https://github.com/tbar0970/jethro-pmm/issues/488#issuecomment-1652754994).

[tbar0970]

Forcing a person into just one congregation actually makes reporting hard. A leader in two congregations is only registered as being part of one reporting group. I do expect them to show up at the congregation that they cannot be registered for.

Sure. This combination of factors makes me think you'd probably be best off recording attendance at groups instead of congregations. That way, members who you don't expect to attend can be omitted from the start, and you can capture the attendance of some people at multiple services.

You could turn on the "add on add-person form" flag for the relevant groups, to help you remember to add new people to them upfront.

[simon-KAC]

"Does your church have pastoral care responsibilities divided "per congregation""

Good question.

In short, we work congregationally. This supports the reason why the homebound person would be best registered against their congregation. Workarounds for this are not hard to see. I will keep people in a congregation and put their status to "Satellite".

But, when a number of key people are attending multiple services, the reports from attendance don't reflect who is actually there. A head-count doesn't need a database. But a breakdown of the types of people in each congregation on a given Sunday is useful.

We're attributing the status of people depending on their level of commitment to the church.

It may be that a few 'core' members attend both morning and evening which then affects the reports given when we see that fewer 'core' people are in the evening service for example.

I'm pondering the idea of moving to groups, rather than congregations but I see more issues to be resolved by doing that too.

The reality is that people do attend more than one service. Each church can work out the logistics of how those people are pastored. But not being able flag them, is a shortcoming in the system think. I will continue to think this through.

Humbly, Simon

On Mon, 31 Jul 2023 at 17:09, Jeff Turner @.***> wrote:

Thanks for your input @simon-KAC https://github.com/simon-KAC.

Putting them into a separate "homebound" congregation is another good solution but does affect the relationship with them and their church family. So, we don't expect them to show up but we want to care for them.

Curious as to why this is? Does your church have pastoral care responsibilities divided "per congregation", such that marking someone congregation-less has pastoral implications? "Implied pastoral implications" is actually one of the arguments against allowing people in more than one congregation (#488 (comment) https://github.com/tbar0970/jethro-pmm/issues/488#issuecomment-1652754994 ).

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/tbar0970/jethro-pmm/issues/930#issuecomment-1657792353, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/A6OMZXD72FJEOCI4CIQURSDXS5KZNANCNFSM6AAAAAA25U5ZKI . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[tbar0970]

The reality is that people do attend more than one service. Each church can work out the logistics of how those people are pastored. But not being able flag them, is a shortcoming in the system think.

Just to reiterate the point mentioned above: Jethro is able to flag them, by using groups, and recording attendance for the groups.

If we were to make a change so that people could be in multiple Jethro congregations, then congregations would be just another type of group. So the functionality would work out the same as if you just used groups.

[s4069b]

we have been using 'groups' to mark attendance (instead of 'congregation') in Jethro for years. Simply created an attendance group for each congregation, and add/remove whoever we want to the group - It works fine. Each month we spring clean the attendance groups. We also have a report emailed each Monday with a list of anyone who missed church for three weeks in a row... with their email/mobile included to make followup easy.

If you want to keep using 'congregation' and not create an attendance 'group' corresponding to each congregation, perhaps you could:

1. add unnamed numbers to your 'head-count' for congregation 'a' to account for those who attended congregation 'a' instead of their home congregation 'b'?
2. when someone from congregation 'a' attends congregation 'b' - mark them present in congregation 'a', but reduce your head-count for congregation 'a'? (it's a bit 'loose' but at least helps you keep track of who made it to church that week)
3. ... I'm sure there are other possibilities, maybe even creating an attendance report which gets emailed to you?

If, for some reason, you do not work on the assumption that a regular has a home congregation (or if you work on the assumption that people should attend church twice or three times each week) - then I would simply move to creating an attendance group for each congregation.

The only other thought I have - is that if it were possible for a 'congregation' to have 'multiple meeting times' you may have another work around. But I've not thought about what else that might mess with in Jethro?

[tim-pearce]

We currently only have one service but we were having 2 and there were many people attending both services. We still wanted to know if people had attended at least once on a given day. I wasn't recording attendance in Jethro at that point. It was recorded in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had space for what would be two groups in Jethro and then worked out if someone had attended at least once on the day. The 'problem' with Jethro is that it revolves around 'congregations'. In my mind the people attending our two services are very much part of the same congregation but we do want to know which service they attend. Could perhaps specific groups be tied to congregations such that attendance at a group would also be marked as attendance at a congregation? So if we have a group for 9:30am service and a group for 5pm service belonging to our congregation then attendance at either or both would be marked as present at the congregation on the day. It might be possible to add a count to the attendance record.

[tbar0970]

@tim-pearce let's create a new issue to discuss this idea.