How to build a new member class workflow in Planning Center

A new member class workflow in Planning Center is one workflow in People with a step for each stage between "I'm interested in membership" and "member": sign up, take the class, meet with a pastor or elder, affirm the membership commitment, and get welcomed into a next step. A form puts each person into the first step, every step has an owner and a deadline, and when someone finishes, a list automation sets their membership type for you. Below is the full setup, and how to stop the class itself from being the step where people stall.

What you're building

A membership pathway everyone walks the same way. Today it's often a sign-up sheet, a reminder email a few days before the class, a follow-up email with the covenant, and someone on staff updating profiles by hand a month later. In Planning Center it becomes a row of cards that move left to right, with a person responsible at each step and a clear view of who is stuck where.

Planning Center lists becoming a member as one of the most common uses of Workflows. You need Planning Center People, where Workflows, Forms and Lists live. Nothing else is required.

Step 1: Decide what "member" means in your profiles

Before you build anything, decide which value a person ends up with. Planning Center keeps this in the Membership type field, which you customize on the Personal tab of the Customize fields page in People. Most churches need only a few values, for example Visitor, Regular attender, Member and Inactive. Keep the list short: a membership type that nobody sets is noise in every report.

Step 2: Write the path on paper first

List what has to happen between "interested" and "member", in order. For most churches it looks like this:

Signs up for the next class (form, connection card or a conversation)
Takes the class: your church's story, what you believe, how you're governed, what members commit to
Meets with a pastor or elder (testimony, questions, baptism if your church requires it)
Affirms the membership covenant or commitment
Is welcomed: announced or introduced, and pointed to a group or a team

Five or six steps is plenty. Each one should be something a single person can finish and mark done. If your elders vote on new members, that's its own step with its own owner.

Step 3: Create the workflow and give every step an owner

In People, open Workflows, create a workflow named "Membership" (or "New member class"), and add one step per line of your list. Then, for each step:

Set a default assignee. The class step belongs to whoever teaches or coordinates the class; the meeting step to the pastor or elder who schedules them. Share the workflow with those people first so you can assign steps to them.
Set an expected response time. Planning Center emails the assignee and marks the card past due when it sits too long. Without it, a person waiting three months for a meeting looks the same as a person who signed up yesterday.

If you've built a volunteer pipeline already, this is the same setup; see volunteer onboarding with Planning Center Workflows for the step settings in more detail.

Step 4: Feed it from a form, and send emails from automations

Create a membership interest form in People (or add a "I'd like to become a member" question to your connection card form) and add a form automation that adds the person's card to the Membership workflow. Link the form from your website and your Church Center app. Every sign-up now lands in step 1 with an owner, instead of in someone's inbox.

Resist adding "Send welcome email" as a workflow step. Planning Center's own guidance is to send those emails from a form or list automation instead, so nobody has to click a card just to send a message. Form automations can send an email the moment someone submits.

Step 5: Run the class so nobody waits on it

The class step is where membership pathways stall. Classes run every quarter or two, so someone who signs up the week after a class waits months. People miss the date, and the coordinator has to find out who actually attended and click each card forward. Decide three things:

What the class covers. Your story, your statement of faith, how decisions are made, what members commit to, and how to take a next step. Short sections beat one long session.
How someone takes it if they can't make the date. A recorded or written version of the class keeps the pathway moving between sessions, and gives people who did attend something to come back to.
Who moves the card, and when. If you only hold the class in person, move the whole class at once: in the workflow, click Select All above the list of cards and move everyone who attended to the next step together.

Doing it with EquipEngine

EquipEngine is a training platform for Planning Center churches, and it can run the class step for you. Put the class content in a course (written lessons, video, and a short acknowledgement of the membership commitment), then link the course to the class step of your Membership workflow. When someone's card enters that step, the course is assigned to them; with Auto-invite on enrollment on, people who don't have an EquipEngine account yet get an invitation by email. When they finish, their card moves to the next step and EquipEngine can write a value to a custom field on their Planning Center profile, such as the date they finished in a "New Member Class" field. See the Planning Center integration docs for linking a step and setting up the field.

Your workflow keeps running as it does now; EquipEngine only listens to the class step and closes it. Workflow auto-assign and custom field write-back are on the Equip plan, which has a 30-day free trial with no card — see pricing.

Step 6: Set membership type automatically

Don't make anyone update profiles by hand at the end. Planning Center's recommendation for a membership class is to create a list of the people who completed it, then add an automation to that list that sets their membership type. In People:

Create a list with a rule that matches people who finished: for example, people who completed the Membership workflow, or people whose "New Member Class" field has a value.
Turn on the list's auto-refresh so new people are picked up without anyone running it.
Add a list automation that sets Membership type to Member.

If your elders approve each new member, make the list rule depend on the last step of the workflow, not on the class, so nobody becomes a member before the approval step closes.

Step 7: Hand them to their next step

Membership is a starting line. The final step's owner points each new member to a group or a team, and if they want to serve, adds them to your volunteer workflow so the next pathway starts on its own. Our church volunteer onboarding process covers what that path should include.

Common mistakes

Email steps in the workflow. A step that exists only to send an email makes someone click a card to send a message. Send it from a form or list automation.
A class step with no clock. Without an expected response time, people who missed the class sit in that step indefinitely and nobody notices.
Updating membership type by hand. It gets done in a batch months later, or not at all. Let the list automation do it.
No way to take the class between sessions. If the only path runs through one date a quarter, every week of delay is a chance for an interested person to drift.
Stopping at "member". The best time to invite someone into a group or a team is the week they join.

Copy this: a new member class workflow

Step	Owner	Expected response
1. Signed up (from the membership form)	Membership coordinator	7 days
2. Class complete	Class teacher, or automatic with EquipEngine	30 days
3. Meeting with a pastor or elder	Pastor or elder	14 days
4. Membership commitment affirmed	Pastor or elder	7 days
5. Welcomed and pointed to a next step	Membership coordinator	14 days
Membership type set to Member	List automation on a list of people who finished	none

Adjust the steps and days to your church's process, then build it in People this week, before your next class date.