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 the marriage status of a widow or widower to your congregation you will need to have the name of the deceased 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 add a person to your church records.

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 information is super helpful for church leadership to be aware of, as those can be sensitive dates for the members under their care. Further information on showing deceased family members is available in the following support document.

Add a separated or divorced spouse to your congregation

If the spouse of a member is separated or divorced and is not a member of your congregation, then it is still necessary to add the spouse to Church Social. That person would be visible only to office-bearers and to 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.

To add the non-member spouse to your Church Social you would 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 add a person to your church records.

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

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!