Phone Bulletin, Visitor Cards & Prayer Requests

When someone scans your church’s QR code from a pew card, welcome sign, or printed back cover, your standing bulletin link (/bulletin/<church-slug>) opens this week’s published bulletin right in their phone’s browser—with no app to download and no account or sign-in required.

If you turn on Visitor card (“New here? Say hello”) or Prayer requests under Church details on the Bulletins page, the bottom of the phone bulletin also offers simple, welcoming forms that deliver privately to your church’s Responses inbox (/app/bulletins/responses).

The phone bulletin is designed for quiet, effortless reading during worship and quick follow-up during the week:

• Switch to Aa Larger text: Tapping Larger text at the top right scales the entire bulletin up cleanly on their phone screen. Their phone remembers this preference automatically for future Sundays.
• Tap links, email addresses & phone numbers: Web addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in announcements, events, and About us are automatically turned into tappable links.
• Add upcoming events to their phone calendar: Any event under Coming up that includes a date offers an Add to calendar link that downloads a standard .ics calendar item for Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or Outlook.
• Give online: When your church has an Online giving page saved under Church details, the bulletin displays a Give online button.
• Switch between multiple services on the same date: If your church publishes more than one bulletin on the same day (for example, Traditional · 8:30 AM and Contemporary · 11:00 AM), the standing link asks “Which service are you attending?” and includes links at the bottom to switch between services.

Submitting a visitor card or prayer request

• New here? Say hello (/bulletin/<church-slug>/welcome): Visitors enter their first and last name, an email address or phone number, an optional This is my first visit checkbox, and an optional note (“Anything you’d like us to know?”).
• Send a prayer request (/bulletin/<church-slug>/prayer): People can include their name or leave it blank to send the request anonymously. To protect privacy, requests stay strictly with pastoral staff unless the sender explicitly checks The church may share this on the prayer list. Senders can also check Please contact me and leave an email address or phone number.

Open Responses (/app/bulletins/responses) from the button at the top of the Bulletins page, which displays a badge count whenever new items are waiting in your inbox.

Privacy, roles & email notifications

Owner & Admin

View Inbox, Archived, and Spam responses; receive email alerts when a new non-spam response arrives; and take follow-up actions.

Member

No access to Responses. Visitor cards and prayer requests are never shown to regular church members.

Automatic AI spam screening

Public forms on the internet occasionally attract automated sales pitches or junk. Whenever a response is submitted, an automatic AI check screens it in the background:

• Set aside, never deleted: Submissions that look like advertising, scams, or junk are placed in the Spam tab (with a short note explaining “Why it was set aside”) so they don’t clutter your Inbox or trigger notification emails.
• You have the final say: Click Not spam on any item in the Spam tab to move it to your Inbox, or click Spam on an inbox item to move it out of the way.
• “Not checked for spam”: If the AI screening service is unavailable or not configured when a submission arrives, Parsonage keeps the response in your Inbox labeled Not checked for spam and notifies staff as normal so a real visitor or prayer request is never lost.

One-click follow-up actions

Each card in your Inbox gives you direct buttons to act on the submission without retyping names or contact details:

1. 1

   Add to directory (Visitor cards)

   Creates a new person in your church directory with their name, email, and phone number and sets their status to Visitor (subject to your plan’s directory people limit). Once added, the response links directly to their directory profile.

2. 2

   Create task

   Starts a follow-up task on the Tasks page (for example, “Welcome Jordan Taylor” or “Follow up on a prayer request from Jordan Taylor”). Because Tasks are visible to everyone on your church team—including Members—a prayer request’s wording is never copied into a task, only the person’s name and contact details.

3. 3

   Add to prayer list (Prayer requests with consent)

   Shown only when the sender checked The church may share this on the prayer list. Clicking Add to prayer list appends the request to the Prayer list in the draft of your next upcoming bulletin (on or after today in your church’s time zone). You can then open that bulletin to review, edit, and publish or republish it.

4. 4

   Archive or Delete

   Click Archive once you’ve followed up to move the card to the Archived tab (you can always click Move to inbox later), or click Delete to remove a submission permanently.