Church phone & text line
How we run a church phone and text line with an AI assistant: answers from your FAQ, hands off to people, and keeps caller lookups private.
Add to Grok Bot Opens the free template for this blueprint.
The problem
Calls and texts come in at all hours, mostly the same few questions, and first-time guests slip through the cracks.
What it does
It answers calls and texts from our FAQ (service times, kids through 5th grade, parking, what we believe, upcoming events). It texts links like the volunteer page and passes small-group interest to a staff member. It logs first-time guests who text "hello," and writes a summary of every call with a likely-caller match from Planning Center.
Setup
- Write a one-page FAQ in your own voice.
- Get a church phone and text number from Bland (about $30 a month), then connect it and Planning Center (read-only).
- We replaced Gloo and Text In Church with this setup. It costs less and works better for us.
- Choose which links it can text and who gets small-group handoffs.
- Test with staff for a week before going public.
Guardrails
- It answers only from the approved FAQ. Anything else goes to a staff member.
- The caller lookup is a "likely" match for staff and is never said back to the caller.
- Pastoral or urgent calls go straight to a person.
How a call or text moves through it
- Someone calls or texts the church number.It could be a Saturday night question or a Tuesday morning call.
- The assistant answers from our FAQ.It covers service times, kids programs through 5th grade, parking, what we believe, and upcoming events, using words we wrote.
- It sends a helpful link when it fits.For example, the volunteer page or the event sign-up.
- It hands off what needs a person.Small-group interest goes to the staff member who leads groups. Anything pastoral or urgent goes straight to a human.
- It logs first-time guests.When someone texts "hello," it's noted for staff follow-up.
- It writes a summary for staff.Every call gets a short summary with a likely-caller match from Planning Center, so we know who to follow up with.
Planning Center connects through its MCP connector. We keep ours read-only. See how to connect Planning Center to an AI assistant.
If you are coming from another church texting service, here is why we switched from Gloo and Text In Church.
Time saved
We're still tracking this honestly, so there's no number here yet.
Add to Grok Bot Opens the free template for this blueprint.
Questions pastors ask
- Does the AI pretend to be a pastor?
- No. It answers only from the FAQ we wrote and passes anything pastoral or urgent to a person.
- What phone service do you use?
- We use Bland for the church number. It costs about $30 a month for us.
- Does it look people up in Planning Center?
- Yes, read-only. It suggests a likely match for staff in the call summary and never says it back to the caller.
- What did this replace?
- We used Gloo and Text In Church before. This setup costs less and works better for us.