Managing Marriages in Church Social

Add a new Marriage relationship

Here are the steps required to marry a couple where both the man and the woman are members of your congregation.

1. ​Go to the record of the primary spouse (the husband) and then click the Add person button in the top right. 
2. ​Click on the Existing tab and then search for and choose the spouse (the wife) in the list and click the Add button. ​Now you have united both spouses to belong to the same family in your Church Social Account.
3. You can now go to edit either spouse and set up a Marriage record that connects the two spouses.  You would set the marriage Status to Active and add the Start date to the date of their wedding.
4. ​Once you have made these changes you can edit the last name of the wife so that she has the same last name as the husband.  You would leave the Birth last name field set to the maiden name of the wife.

Add a widow or widower to your congregation

In order to add a widow or widower to your congregation, and add records about their marriage status, you will need to have the name of the other spouse and the date that the marriage ended at minimum.

To add the deceased spouse go to the "People" page (https://app.churchsocial.com/people) and select the "Manage" tab. Once there, click on the “Add person” button on the right-hand side of the page. This will open a dialog where you can quickly add a person to your church records. Since this person isn't a member, he or she will not appear on the Families page (https://app.churchsocial.com/families).

Once this is done, you’ll be able to go back to the member’s profile and create a marriage record for the member, by selecting the non-member that you just added as the spouse.

This information is used to show the deceased spouse when you click on the widow or widower in the directory and is also used in the Deceased family report. The wedding anniversary date will also be visible to office-bearers. This is super helpful information for church leadership to be aware of, as those can be sensitive dates for the members under their care. Further information on showing deceased members is available in the following support document.

Add a separated or divorced spouse to your congregation

If the spouse is separated or divorced and is not a member of your congregation, then that person would be visible only to office-bearers and your statisticians in the "Manage" section of the People page. We recommend keeping this information in your Church Social so that your church maintains accurate statistics about membership changes over the years.

So while it might feel weird at first to create non-member records like this, it's totally fine and, in fact, exactly how we designed Church Social to work!