St. Paul the Apostle has moved to a new kind of church record keeping solution called Realm®. It primarily serves the administrative needs of our staff, but it also offers some exciting opportunities to support the way you are involved in our church. Not only will this improve work life for our ministry staff, it will make it easier for our church family to connect with each other, keep up with what’s going on, and grow as a connected community of believers
What is Realm? Realm is a real ministry tool.
Realm is an online ministry tool designed for real time connection. It helps our church connect with you and you connect with us. If you consider yourself part of this church family, you’ll love it. Realm allows you to manage your personal information and who is allowed to see it, control your giving, and keep in touch with the groups that matter to you.
Why use Realm? Realm strengthens church connections.
Being the church doesn’t just happen at the church. Realm helps us serve you better and leads this church well between Sundays. Everyone can be connected from anywhere at any time, right from our mobile devices. It engages everyone in the life of our church by supporting the healthy relationships essential to our church’s mission. We’ll stay organized, and you’ll stay informed about all of the opportunities for fellowship. When we share life together, we will grow together.
What about my privacy? Realm is safe, private, and secure.
Your privacy is one of our greatest concerns. Realm is only made up of the people in your church, it’s not like a social network that’s open to everyone. Realm keeps your data safe and gives you control over what information you share and who can see it.
Your information is your information .
1. You have complete control over who can see your contact and personal information .
2. Contact information is never public or searchable on the Internet. Any information you elect to make visible to your church family is always protected behind a login.
3. Authorized staff will always have access to your profile information .
4. You and certain authorized staff may update your profile information . In some cases, your group leader may update your contact information if you have made it visible to group leaders.
5. For safety reasons, sharing contact and personal information for children under 18 is limited. Parents determine whether or not to display their child’s name in the church directory.
6. Children under 13 may not participate and will not be able to sign in. What People May See By default, the viewing of your contact and personal information is limited to members of groups you are in, group leaders, and staff members. If you choose to, however, you can make your information visible to the entire church. But if you prefer to be more private, you can customize how people see specific information .
• Contact information : Name, Address, Phones, and Email.
• Personal information : Marital Status, Family Position, Member Status, but you also have the option of sharing your birthday, gender, allergy information , and skills with people in your church.
*If you are a group leader or host an event, certain contact information may be visible regardless of the settings you choose.
Privacy Settings
• Everyone—Like a church directory listing, everyone in our church will be able to see whatever profile information is marked as visible to everyone.
• My Groups + Group Leaders + Church Staff—This seeing means informationon will only be shared with the people you are involved with at church. This is the default seeing.
• Group Leaders + Church Staff—You would use this seeing if you wanted to keep some profile information hidden from anyone who is not a group leader or on staff.
• Church Staff Only—This seeing effectively removes you from the church directory. Your information will only be available to authorized church staff.**
• Custom Privacy—Choose different privacy levels for specific contact fields and personal information. You can do this in two places: when you edit your profile information or when you manage your privacy seeings.
*** **While you can hide the majority of your information from most of your church, you should know that, regardless of your settings, contact data will still be visible to certain members of our church staff.
***The Directory page shows all individuals who have a login, along with individuals without a login who have been opted-in to the directory. Currently, individuals with a login cannot opt out of being listed in the directory. Family Privacy A family member with a primary position such as “Head” or “Spouse” can change privacy seeings for other members of the family and opt family members into the church directory. Birthdays are required for children (as a means to prohibit access), but it’s up to you if you want to share the birth date with your church family.
What about giving? Realm gives you control over your giving.
Giving should be easy, and Realm places giving right in the palm of your hands. You may set up recurring gifts, view your giving history, and make changes at any time. Realm automatically records all electronic gifts and adds them to your giving record making it easy for you to give, and easy for our bookkeeper to track.
How do I start? Follow a few simple steps.
If you haven’t received an invitation to join Realm yet:
- Visit https://onrealm.org/StPaulApostle/Home to set up a Realm login.
- If your church is on Realm Connect, visit http://onelink.to/connectapp to download the mobile app.
- Your Realm login works on your home computer and on your mobile devices, so when you sign into Realm, use the login you created in step 1 for the computer or the app.
- Check to make sure that we have your address and other personal information entered correctly under My Profile. If anything is incorrect, you can change it.
- If you have any questions, contact the parish office.