Posted by Joe Filbrun

Unlike most traditional communication platforms, The City helps you build a multi-directional communication channel with your church that is built on trusted relationships. This means that important communication goes out quickly and reliably, while respecting the chosen engagement levels of each individual in your church. As the signal of your communication grows stronger and more trusted, the more engaged your entire congregation becomes, because they value the communications they're receiving.

Part of building this type of trusted channel in the church includes the ability to rapidly alert your people in crisis situations, telling them what they need to know right away, even if the notification conflicts with their personal settings. After all, they're not just software users, they're members of a real community and want to be informed of critical information.

To enable this, we deployed a new feature last night that lets group leaders create posts that override individual email settings and immediately send email to all group participants who haven't opted out of email notifications in the group. This ensures that everyone receives urgent messages about emergencies in the life of the group. These emergency posts can also be shared with any person or group in The City, so you can make sure that the information gets to the right people, right away. We also keep track of who has received a notification, so no one gets spammed with duplicates from numerous groups. That way, you can keep your focus on ministry to people in need, rather than trying to remember who's been notified.

Here's a video that walks through the functionality of this feature, and the thinking behind it: