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Building Your Roster

The Roster is where the people in your ministry live — students, leaders, parents, alumni, guests. The app treats the roster as more than a contact list; it’s the lens through which attendance, contact history, and prayer are all tied back to real people.

The Person record

Every person in the roster has a single record that captures:

• Name, contact info, and birthday — the basics
• Person type — student, leader, parent, alumnus, guest, or other
• Graduation year — used instead of a fixed grade so the student’s grade stays accurate automatically as school years roll over
• Engagement level — how involved this person is in your ministry
• School, notes, medical info, emergency contacts — as needed
• Groups — custom tags you define for small groups, teams, or affinity groups

You can access a person’s full profile by tapping their row in the Roster list.

Graduation year vs. grade

A common frustration with youth ministry tools is that students’ grades go stale on September 1st. Youth Ministry stores a graduation year instead and derives the current grade from today’s date. A student you enter as “Class of 2028” will show up as a 9th grader this year, a 10th grader next year, and age out of the youth group on their own without any maintenance from you.

Engagement levels

Engagement levels describe how deeply someone is participating in the ministry. The defaults are things like Core, Regular, Occasional, and Fringe, but you can rename and reorder them in Settings. Engagement levels drive several features:

• Filters in the Roster and Contact Management views
• The Attendance Report (see the Attendance & Contact guide), which can look for students at a given engagement level who haven’t shown up recently
• Sorting priorities on the Dashboard

Update a student’s engagement level as their involvement grows or fades. The app uses it to help you notice and respond to those shifts.

Filtering and finding people

The Roster list supports filtering by:

• Person type (students only, leaders only, etc.)
• Grade (derived from graduation year)
• Engagement level
• Gender, school, and group
• Free-text search for names

Filters combine — so “11th graders at Central High who are Core-level” is one tap and a search box.

The Person detail view

Tap any row to open a person’s detail view. Along with their contact info and notes, you’ll see:

• Attendance History — every event they’ve been checked in to, most recent first
• Contact History — every text, call, email, or in-person conversation you’ve logged
• Prayer Requests — any prayers in your Prayer Space linked to this person

This gives you a quick, complete picture before a conversation: I know this student hasn’t been here in four weeks, I know I last texted them on the 3rd, and I know what’s going on in their life that I’ve been praying about.

Adding and editing

Adding a person is a tap of the + button on the Roster list. You can also import a whole roster from a CSV — see the Importing and Exporting Data guide. The Person record is deliberately simple: add what you need, leave the rest blank. Nothing is required except a name.