Church Flow

Description

Church Flow for WordPress puts your church’s Church Flow account to work on the website you already have. Add a block and your pages show what your team manages in Church Flow: this Sunday’s service times, the latest sermon with audio and notes, upcoming events with sign-up, current announcements, the groups people can join, a giving form that takes card, monthly and bank transfer gifts, your own forms with their fields on your page, a prayer request form, a request-a-call form and a newsletter sign-up. Nothing to copy across by hand: every change your team makes in Church Flow shows on your site.

Every feature is a block for the WordPress editor with a live preview and its settings in the sidebar. Every block also has a shortcode with the same options, so it works in the classic editor and in page builders.

Page builders

In Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Bricks and WPBakery Page Builder, every Church Flow feature is also a native element with the block’s settings and a live preview in the builder’s own editor. Each integration loads only while its builder is active. With Elementor Pro, nine dynamic tags put the church name and logo, the next service, the next event and its sign-up link, the latest sermon and its image, and the Give page and member area links into any widget.

Blocks and shortcodes

• Give: [church_flow_give]. Card and monthly gifts in your currency, PayPal for other currencies, quick amounts, a fund picker or a pinned fund with the fund’s description, anonymous gifts when your church allows them, a default amount and frequency, your own intro and button label, links that pre-fill the form (?cf_amount=250&cf_fund=<fund id>&cf_frequency=monthly), bank transfer (EFT) details and a link to manage giving in the member area.
• Events: [church_flow_events]. Upcoming events as cards, a list or a month calendar, with cover images, dates and end times in your time zone, seats left, add-to-calendar and directions links, a calendar feed visitors can subscribe to, pages of events, an optional search box, and a Register button that opens the sign-up on the same page or on your Church Flow site.
• Event sign-up: [church_flow_event_signup slug="..."]. A register button, a compact card or the full sign-up form for one event, with end times on the dates and, once someone has registered, add-to-calendar links for their date and a note that the details are in their inbox. Leave the event blank to follow the Events block on the same page.
• Service times: [church_flow_service_times]. Your gatherings with their next dates, the single next gathering, or one line per service type for headers and footers, with add-to-calendar links on every date, directions, a calendar feed to subscribe to, and optional cover images and time zone labels.
• Sermons: [church_flow_sermons]. A sermon library with series, speaker, Bible book and topic filters and search, a podcast subscribe link, scripture references and optional language and campus labels, or the latest sermon as a card or an inline player; audio, notes, video (YouTube or Facebook), an MP3 download and more sermons from the same series on each sermon’s page.
• Announcements: [church_flow_announcements]. Current notices, pinned items first and marked, with event dates, a grid or a list, short or full text with Read more, and category filters.
• Groups: [church_flow_groups]. The groups directory with type, meeting day and campus filters, a search box and sorting by name or meeting day; joining happens in the member area.
• Form: [church_flow_form slug="..."]. One of your Church Flow forms with its fields on your page, one page at a time when the form has pages, with a progress bar, a required-fields note, your church’s phone prefix as the phone hint, file uploads, conditional questions and, when you want it, the form’s own colour. Forms with a payment, a signature, household members, sign-in or reCAPTCHA show the hosted form inside the block.
• Prayer request: [church_flow_prayer_request]. Name, email or phone and the request with a characters-left counter, straight to your prayer team’s queue, with your own privacy note under the button.
• Request a call: [church_flow_request_call campaign="..."]. Name, phone, email, an optional best time to call and a message, queued in one of your running follow-up campaigns.
• Newsletter sign-up: [church_flow_newsletter]. Email, first name and your newsletter topics, with double opt-in, a consent checkbox in your own words when you want one, a one-row or compact style for footers and sidebars, your own placeholder and a thank-you page of your choice.
• My account: [church_flow_my_account]. A button or link into your church’s member area, or straight to a member’s profile, family, account, serving or prayer page, in the same tab or a new one, with an optional icon.

Blocks follow your theme’s typography and colours and take your church’s brand colour as their accent, on a light or a dark theme and inside any coloured Group or Cover block. Select any block and open the editor’s Styles tab to set its colours, typography, spacing, border and shadow from your theme’s presets. The blocks read well on phones, work in right-to-left languages and meet WCAG AA. Five ready-made page patterns (Visit us, Give, Sermon library, Events and Connect) sit under Church Flow in the editor’s Patterns tab.

How it connects

Type your church’s Church Flow address once under Settings, Church Flow and select Connect, then register your website in Church Flow (Admin, Custom Domains, Add domain, Another website you already run). Content is fetched by your WordPress server and cached; what visitors do (a gift, a sign-up, a form, a prayer request, a call request, a newsletter sign-up) goes straight from their browser to your church’s Church Flow account. No visitor data is stored on your WordPress site.

Church Flow is the church management platform behind the plugin: people, groups, events, giving, sermons, follow-up, a member app and a hosted website. Learn more at https://church-flow.com.

External services

This plugin connects to the following services. Nothing is sent anywhere until you have connected a Church Flow account.

Church Flow (https://*.church-flow.com)
Your church’s own Church Flow account, at the address you enter in the settings. The WordPress server fetches public content from it (service times, sermons, events, announcements, groups, giving options, form definitions, newsletter topics, branding, time zone and currency) and caches it. Visitors’ browsers send their own actions to it directly: a gift (amount, fund, email address, frequency), an event sign-up (names, email address, phone number, answers to the event’s questions), a form submission (the answers the form asks for and any file the visitor attaches), a prayer request (name, email or phone, the request), a request for a call (name, phone, email, gender when asked, a message) or a newsletter sign-up (email address, first name, chosen topics). A form also sends anonymous view and start counts when it is shown and when a visitor first types in it (no answers and no personal details), so your church can see how many people open each form. Optionally, an API token you paste in the settings lets the editor list your forms, follow-up campaigns and email topics; the token stays on your server. Terms: https://church-flow.com/terms-of-service.html. Privacy: https://church-flow.com/privacy-policy.html.

Cloudflare Turnstile (https://challenges.cloudflare.com)
Loaded in the visitor’s browser only on pages with a giving, event sign-up, form, prayer request or newsletter block, and only when your Church Flow account has Turnstile switched on (for forms, when the form’s spam protection is Turnstile), to tell people from bots before a gift, sign-up, form, prayer request or newsletter sign-up is sent. Terms: https://www.cloudflare.com/website-terms/. Privacy: https://www.cloudflare.com/privacypolicy/.

YouTube (https://www.youtube.com)
Only when a sermon has a YouTube video: the sermon’s page, and the latest sermon when a block shows it as a player, embed the video with WordPress’s own oEmbed. Your WordPress server asks YouTube for the embed code and the visitor’s browser loads the video player from YouTube. Terms: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms. Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy.

Paystack, Peach Payments, Payfast and PayPal
When a visitor gives, their browser is sent to the hosted checkout page of the payment gateway your Church Flow account uses for that currency (Paystack, Peach Payments or Payfast for card gifts in your currency; PayPal for other currencies) and comes back to the same page afterwards. Card and account details are entered on the gateway’s page, never on your site. Paystack: https://paystack.com/terms and https://paystack.com/privacy/merchant. Peach Payments: https://www.peachpayments.com/legal-doc/payer-terms-conditions/ and https://www.peachpayments.com/legal-doc/privacy-cookie-policy/. Payfast: https://payfast.io/legal/ and https://payfast.io/privacy-policy/. PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/useragreement-full and https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/paypal/privacy-full.

Technical details