Help & FAQ
Quick answers to the most common questions about setting up and running Steward. Can't find what you need? Email us at support@injil-ai.com — we're happy to help.
Getting started
How do I sign in?
Just enter your email address and password — there's no need to pick your church from a list first, Steward finds it from your email. (If you happen to use the same email at more than one church on Steward, we'll ask which one you mean.) Forgot your password? Use the Forgot password link on the sign-in screen and we'll email you a reset link.
How do I set up my church?
When you first sign in to the admin panel, your dashboard shows a Get started checklist with four steps: set up your church profile, import your members, invite your team, and schedule your first service. Work through them in any order — the checklist ticks each one off automatically as you go, and you can dismiss it once you're done.
Where do I set my church name, logo, and service times?
Go to Church Profile (under System in the sidebar, or /settings/church). There you can set your church name, upload a logo, add your address and weekly service times, set your time zone, and choose a brand colour. Your logo and service times also appear to members in the mobile app, shown in your church's time zone — so set the time zone correctly if your church isn't in the default region.
How do I invite other admins?
On the Church Profile page, use the Invite admins section. Enter one or more email addresses and we'll send each person an invitation. They click the link, set their own password, and become an admin — there are no shared logins or passwords to pass around. Invitations expire after 14 days; you can re-send or revoke a pending invite at any time.
Can I give someone limited admin access?
Yes. When you add or edit a person on the People page, set their role to Ministry Leader — a restricted admin who can run the day-to-day side of the console (ministry teams, services, rostering, courses, events, content, and children's check-in) but can't see pastoral and discipleship reports, manage member accounts, or invite other admins. It's a good fit for a worship or kids' ministry coordinator who needs to organise their own area without full access to everyone's records.
Members & families
How do I import my existing members?
Go to People → Import (/people/import). Upload a CSV, map your columns to Steward's fields, preview the result, then confirm. We support exports from Planning Center and Breeze directly, as well as plain CSV files. The preview flags duplicate emails and missing required fields before anything is saved, so you can import with confidence.
Can members be grouped into families?
Yes. Use Families to create households and add members with roles (head, spouse, child, other). Family grouping shows up in the member directory and powers children's check-in and family attendance views.
Can I add children who don't have an email address?
Yes. On the Families page, use Add Child to create a child record with just a name (and optionally a date of birth) — no email or password required, since children don't sign in. They're added to the household and can be used for children's check-in right away. You can add an email later if they ever need their own login.
Can members control what's visible in the directory?
Yes. Each member can hide their phone, email, or address from the directory in their mobile app privacy settings. As an admin you can also set whether the directory is visible to all members or approved members only.
Attendance & beacons
How does attendance tracking work?
Steward detects attendance automatically using small Bluetooth (BLE) beacons placed at your venue. When a member with the app arrives, their phone quietly records their attendance — no sign-in sheets or QR codes required. Manual check-in is always available as a fallback.
How do I set up beacons?
Go to Beacons in the admin panel to add each beacon (UUID, major, minor) and set your church's location and check-in radius. Each plan includes a set number of beacons. If you're not sure how to configure yours, email support@injil-ai.com and we'll walk you through it.
Why do some members not show as attending?
A member must have the Steward app installed, be signed in, and have Bluetooth and notifications enabled for automatic detection to work. You can always record their attendance manually for a service.
Why did automatic check-in stop working on an iPhone?
On iPhone, automatic check-in needs Location access set to Always. iOS occasionally asks members to switch this to "While Using the App" — if they do, background detection pauses and the app shows an "Automatic check-in is paused" banner with a one-tap link to fix it in Settings. They can still check in manually in the meantime, and switching the setting back to Always restores automatic check-in.
What does "records pending sync" mean in the app?
If a member's phone detects them at church while it has no usable connection, the check-in is saved on the device and a strip appears on their attendance screen showing how many records are waiting. These upload by themselves once the phone is back online; tapping the strip uploads them straight away. If the server permanently rejects a record — for example the beacon it saw is no longer registered to your church — the app now says so explicitly rather than letting the count quietly disappear, so nobody assumes an attendance was recorded when it wasn't.
Does Steward track where our members are?
No. Steward never records continuous location traces or GPS trails. What it detects is proximity to the Bluetooth beacons your church has registered — nothing else. iPhones and Android phones both require "Always" location permission before any app is allowed to notice a beacon in the background, which is why Steward asks for it.
The two platforms schedule that detection differently, and we'd rather be precise about it: on Android, background detection is switched on only around your scheduled service times. On iPhone, Apple gives apps no reliable way to switch beacon monitoring back on from the background, so Steward leaves it registered the whole time a member is signed in — which means their phone can briefly wake at other hours. If that happens outside a service window, the server discards the result and no attendance record is created, and the fine-grained proximity checking only runs during service windows. Monitoring is removed entirely when they sign out. Our Privacy Policy sets this out in full.
Does Steward remind members who stop attending?
Yes. A member who usually attends but hasn't checked in gets a gentle "We missed you" reminder on their phone. Steward looks at the whole week — any service, not just Sunday — so someone who comes to a Saturday-evening or weeknight service is never nudged by mistake. Members can turn these reminders off in their app notification settings.
Services, rostering & children
What's the difference between a service and an event?
A service is a worship gathering with attendance tracking and team rostering. An event is a general church activity (fellowship, outreach, youth night) that members can see and RSVP to. Create services under Services and events under Events.
How do I roster volunteers to a service?
Open the service's roster and use Add Person: choose the team, then the person (optionally a sub-team or position). There's no need to set the team up first — Steward allocates it to the service automatically when you roster someone from it. You can still use Allocate Team to lay out a service's teams up front if you prefer, and both stay open so you can add several people in a row. You can roster the same person more than once (across teams, or in different positions) — Steward flags anyone double-booked with a warning badge so you can catch it on purpose.
Can I reuse last week's roster?
Yes. In the roster, choose Copy from previous and pick an earlier service — Steward suggests the most recent one with the same name, or failing that the same service type. It copies that service's teams and rostered people across and then tells you exactly what was copied and what was skipped. It's safe to run twice: anyone already rostered isn't duplicated. People who have since left the team (or been removed from your church) are skipped with a reason, and one-off fill-ins are never carried over — those are deliberately a one-service arrangement.
Someone dropped out — can I roster a fill-in who isn't on the team?
Yes. In Add to Roster, switch to the Fill-in tab and search your whole church: any approved member can cover the slot for that one service. They're marked with an amber Fill-in badge on the roster and receive the usual serving emails, but they're not added to the team — so team lists, member counts, and serving history stay accurate, and they won't be picked up by next week's roster.
Do volunteers get reminded when they're rostered to serve?
Yes. When you add someone to a roster they receive a "you're rostered" email, and everyone serving gets a reminder email the day before the service. These serving emails always go out (they're not part of the optional notification categories members can mute).
How does children's check-in work?
Designate which ministry team(s) run children's ministry, then those volunteers (and admins) can check children in and out per service from Children. Check-out requires selecting an authorised pickup person, so children are only released to approved adults.
Classes & courses
Can I track classes like baptism or membership courses?
Yes. Use Courses to run multi-session classes — baptism, membership, discipleship, sending, or Safe Church / safeguarding training. Create the course, set how many sessions someone needs to attend to complete it, then record attendance each session. When someone reaches the required number of sessions, Steward marks them complete and records the matching discipleship milestone on their record. Completing a class is tracked as preparation — your pastors still decide when someone advances a discipleship stage.
Small groups & group health
How do small groups and Bible studies work?
Create groups under Small Groups — small groups, Bible studies, men's, women's, youth, and more — each with a leader and members. When a group meets (often in someone's home rather than at church), the leader or an admin records the session from the group's Sessions tab: who came, any visitors, and notes. Members see the groups they belong to in the mobile app's Groups tab.
Can I see how our small groups are doing?
Yes — the Group Health report (under Discipleship in the sidebar) gives full admins a pastoral read on every group, across three tabs:
- Group Health — a sortable table of each group's attendance rate, how often it meets, and when it last met, with a Stale flag for groups that have gone quiet. It shows your growth groups by default; you can filter by category or date range, or export to CSV.
- Trends — sessions, attendance, and visitors over time, grouped by week or month.
- Member Drift — growth-group members whose meeting attendance has recently dropped off, sorted by how urgently they need a follow-up, each with a link straight to their journey.
Group Health is a discipleship report, so it's available to full admins only — not Ministry Leaders.
Can I see stats for a single group?
Yes. Open any group on the Small Groups page and choose the Insights tab. It shows the group's all-time sessions, average attendance, attendance rate, visitor count, and when it last met, along with a recent-sessions trend and which members have been least consistent lately — a quick way for a leader to spot who to check in on.
Communication
How do I send an announcement or push notification?
Create an announcement under Content, and choose to send a push notification when you publish it. Members receive it on their phones and in the app's announcement feed. Members can opt in or out of notification categories in their app settings.
Can I choose the Bible verse members see each day?
Yes. The mobile home screen shows a daily Bible verse, and you curate the pool it draws from under Resources → Daily Verses. Add as many verses as you like (reference and text) and Steward rotates through your active ones automatically — showing the same verse to everyone in your church each day and advancing to the next at your local midnight. Toggle a verse inactive to pull it out of rotation without deleting it. If you haven't added any, members see a sensible default verse.
Account, billing & data
What do the plans include?
Plans differ by number of adult attenders, venues, beacons, and features (pastoral-care reports, children's check-in, rostering, support level). See the pricing section on our website, or email support@injil-ai.com for help choosing.
What happens if we go over our plan's attender limit?
Each plan covers a number of approved adult attenders — children, members still pending approval, and removed members don't count towards it. If your count grows past your plan's limit, the admin panel shows a gentle reminder banner so you can upgrade when you're ready. We never block you from adding members or interrupt your services. Email support@injil-ai.com to change plans.
How often do members have to sign in again?
Rarely. As long as someone opens the app at least once a month, they stay signed in — each use extends their session by another 30 days, up to a maximum of a year before we ask them to sign in properly again. Members who leave the app untouched for over a month will be asked to sign in next time. (An earlier issue where iPhones could show the sign-in screen to an already-signed-in member has been fixed — a phone that briefly can't read its saved credentials, typically because it's locked, now waits rather than signing anyone out.)
Someone lost their phone, or left the church — how do I lock them out?
Open People, find the person, and use Reset password. As well as setting a new password immediately, this signs out every device that account is signed in on, usually within about 15 minutes. The same applies when a member resets their own password with the Forgot password link — a password change always ends the other sessions. If you want the account gone entirely rather than locked, remove them instead (see below).
Is our data backed up?
Yes. Your church's database and uploaded files (profile photos, church logos, and content images) are backed up automatically every night, and each backup is copied off-site to storage in Sydney, so the copies stay in Australia too. We also rehearse restores periodically — restoring a recent backup into a scratch database and checking it — because an untested backup isn't really a backup. Our Security & Reliability page has the detail.
If I remove a member, can I get them back?
Yes, within a grace period. Removing a member doesn't erase them straight away — for 30 days the account is held in a recoverable state and you can Restore it from the People page (their original login keeps working). After the grace period the record is permanently anonymised and can no longer be restored. This gives you a safety net against accidental removals.
Can I export my data?
Yes — you own your data and can export it any time. The admin panel exports members, attendance records, and family data as CSV. There's no lock-in.
What happens to our data if we stop using Steward?
If your church closes its Steward account, we archive it first: everyone is signed out and the account is paused, but nothing is deleted yet — so it can be fully restored if you change your mind. After a 30-day grace period the church and all of its data are permanently deleted and can't be recovered. Planning to leave? Export your data first (see above), then email support@injil-ai.com and we'll take care of it.
Mobile app
How do members get the app?
Steward is available on the App Store and Google Play. Members download the app, register, and once an admin approves their account they can check in, read announcements, browse sermons and events, and see the groups they belong to.
What permissions does the app ask for, and why?
When a member first opens Steward it walks them through a short setup asking for Bluetooth (so their phone can detect the beacons at your venue), Location (which lets check-in happen automatically in the background, even when the app is closed), and Notifications (for announcements and reminders). Automatic check-in works best with all three, but members can skip any of them and still use the app and check in manually. (On iPhone, background check-in specifically needs Location set to Always — see the iPhone question above.) Location is used only to detect your church's registered beacons, never to track where members go; see Does Steward track where our members are? above for exactly what each platform does.
Does the app support dark mode?
Yes. Members can choose Light, Dark, or System (match the phone) in the app's appearance settings, and the whole app — including the status bar and headers — follows their choice.
Where's the member directory in the app?
The mobile app has a Groups tab where members see the small groups and Bible studies they're part of. Other members' contact details still appear — with each person's privacy settings applied — when you open someone from a group roster.
A new member registered but can't sign in — why?
New registrations require admin approval. Approve them under People, and they'll be able to sign in.
More help
Still stuck? Email us at support@injil-ai.com. For account security concerns, contact us immediately at the same address.