Families & Households

Geographical Districts & Shepherd Assignments

To scale pastoral care and neighborhood ministry, Kononia allows organizing household records into geographical **Districts** and assigning specific shepherds to oversee them.

Geographical Districts & Shepherd Assignments

To scale pastoral care and neighborhood ministry, Kononia allows organizing household records into geographical Districts and assigning specific shepherds to oversee them.

1. Geographical Districts (district)

The district attribute on the families record is a free-text/selected metadata field that groupings families together.

Use Cases

  • Pastoral Routing: Organizing seasonal visits (such as house blessings or Epiphany prayers) by grouping families in close proximity.
  • Emergency Coordination: Quickly filtering and locating all households in specific areas during weather events or local crises.
  • Regional Grouping: Seeding regional small groups or bible studies based on neighborhood clustering.

2. Servant Assignment (assigned_servant_id)

Every family record can be assigned to a specific servant (shepherd or deacon) via the assigned_servant_id column, which points to a contact record in public.people.

Flow of Responsibility

  • Coordination of Care: The assigned servant acts as the primary contact point between the clergy and the household.
  • Absence Follow-up integration: When a member of the family is flagged as “At Risk” due to consecutive attendance absences, the nightly pg_cron script (auto_generate_absence_pastoral_cases) automatically creates a pastoral care case. This case is assigned directly to the family’s assigned_servant_id.
  • Note Privacy: Pastoral visitation notes and follow-up reports logged against a family or its members are restricted. They are visible only to:
    1. The assigned servant (assigned_servant_id).
    2. The family members’ confession father (confession_father_id).
    3. Priests and organization admins.

3. Configuration & Management

Servants and administrators can update districts and assignments directly from the family editor interface:

  1. Open a Family record and select Edit Details.
  2. Select or enter the geographical District.
  3. Choose the Assigned Servant from the dropdown (filtered to church staff, priests, and registered servants).
  4. Save the changes. The update is synced in real-time to the database, instantly routing any pending absence alerts to the new servant.