Connections by Church Rocket
Paper connect cards into Planning Center People, without retyping.
The slow part was never the typing. It was looking each person up to see whether they are already in Planning Center. Photograph the stack, and Connections reads every card and finds the likely matches, so your staff decide instead of search. Approve a card, and it is in People.
20 cards free. No credit card.
- Match
- Jordan Reyes, found by phone number
- Household
- Kept as it is
- Check
- Image beside every field
- Person
- The same Jordan Reyes, no duplicate
- Added
- The email from the card
How it works
Three steps. The middle one is the reason it works.
Photograph
Take a picture of each card with any phone, in the browser. No scanner and no app to install. Your stack goes into a queue for review.
Review
Connections reads the handwriting and searches Planning Center for people who might already be there. Your staff see the card image beside every field, fix anything misread, and choose the right match.
Approve
Approving creates or updates the person and household in Planning Center People and writes the answers to the places your church picked. If a write fails, a retry finishes the job without doubling what already landed.
Works only with Planning Center, on purpose
No new database. Planning Center stays the record.
Connections is not a church management system and does not want to be one. Your church signs in with its Planning Center account, and that account is your Connections account. There is no second list of people to keep in sync.
- Before you approve a card, Connections searches the people you already have and shows likely matches, so your reviewer can keep last month's visitor from becoming a duplicate.
- You choose which questions your card asks and where each answer goes: custom fields, checkbox options, note categories, or a workflow.
- Birthday, gender, anniversary, marital status, and campus can each be turned on or off.
For your Planning Center administrator
- Setup. A Planning Center organization administrator signs in first to set up your church. After that, staff with Editor or Manager permission in People can sign in.
- Access requested. Planning Center People only.
- What it writes. People, households, contact details, and the fields, notes, and workflows you map. Nothing is written until a staff member approves a card.
- What it never does. Create custom fields, tabs, or other configuration in your People account. If a field you want is missing, Connections tells you what to create and links to your own settings.
How it compares
Most churches use more than one of these. Digital cards and paper cards can feed the same Planning Center workflow. Connections handles the paper half.
| Approach | Where the record ends up | Who checks it | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retyping cards by hand | Planning Center People | The person typing | Hours every week, and cards that sit in a tray until Monday becomes Thursday. |
| Digital-only connect cards | Planning Center, or a texting tool that syncs to it | The guest | Good for guests who will use a phone during the service. Many still pick up the pen. |
| Scanning into a texting tool | That tool's contact list, then synced on | Depends on the tool | Your People record depends on a second system's sync. |
| Pasting photos into a general AI chat app | Wherever someone retypes the answer | Whoever is chatting | Congregant data sits in a personal chat history, and nothing reaches People without retyping. |
| Connections | Planning Center People, directly | Your staff, on every card | Paper cards only. Your digital cards keep working as they do now. |
Your congregants' data
A connect card can hold a family's address, phone number, and a prayer request. Here is exactly what happens to it.
- A person approves every record. Connections never writes to Planning Center on its own.
- One AI provider, under business terms. Card images are sent to Anthropic's Claude API to be read. Anthropic states that its commercial API inputs and outputs are not used to train its models by default.
- You set how long images are kept. By default, card images and their extracted details are deleted 30 days after a card is approved or rejected. Administrators can choose immediate deletion, 7 days, or 365 days instead.
- Each church is walled off. Records are separated by database access controls tied to your Planning Center organization, and images sit in a private storage container for each church.
- Planning Center decides who gets in. It is the only sign-in, and your Planning Center permissions apply.
For your elders or your AI policy
Most churches do not have an AI policy yet. If your leadership wants to know what a tool does with congregant data before you use it, these pages are written to be handed to them.
- How Connections handles card data
- Privacy Policy, including every service provider we use
- Terms of Service
Pricing
Priced by cards scanned each month. Annual billing is ten times the monthly price, so two months are free.
Free trial
$0
No credit card
20 cards
For the life of your account, with every feature. Enough to run a few Sundays and see the result in People.
Sign in with Planning CenterStarter
$19/month
or $190 a year
50 cards a month
About 12 cards a week.
Growth
$49/month
or $490 a year
300 cards a month
About 70 cards a week.
Large
$149/month
or $1,490 a year
1,200 cards a month
About 280 cards a week.
Add-on, bought once
Custom card types $49, one payment
Scan forms other than your connect card, such as an event response card. Upload a filled-in sample, Connections proposes the fields, and you choose where each one goes in Planning Center. There is no renewal, and the cards you scan still come from your plan.
Which plan fits?
Card volume depends far more on how a church uses cards than on its size. A church that hands every attender a card each week can scan forty times as many as a church of the same size that uses them only for first-time guests. Count a typical month of cards, and pick the plan above it. Start with the trial if you are not sure.
The fine print, in plain words
- A card you reject does not count against your month.
- Your administrators are told when you reach 80% of the month's cards, and there is a small buffer before scanning pauses.
- Cancel any time. Your plan runs to the end of the period you paid for.
- If a plan lapses, scanning stops. Cards already in your queue can still be reviewed and approved, and everything in Planning Center stays yours.
Questions
Why not just switch to a digital connect card?
Do both. Digital cards work well for guests who will fill one out on a phone. Plenty of guests still pick up the paper card in the seat back, and those cards should not wait for someone to retype them. Connections sends paper cards to the same Planning Center People record your digital card does.
How accurate is the handwriting reading?
Good, and never assumed to be perfect. That is why every card is reviewed. Your staff see the card image next to each field and can correct anything before approving. A card with no readable name can still be read, but it cannot be approved until someone types the name in.
Will it create duplicate people?
Before a card is approved, Connections searches Planning Center for people who might already be there and shows the likely matches. Your reviewer picks the existing person or creates a new one. Nothing is created without that choice.
Is our congregants' information used to train AI?
Cards are read through Anthropic's commercial Claude API, not a consumer chat app. Anthropic states that its commercial API inputs and outputs are not used for model training by default; its own retention rules, including exceptions for safety and legal requirements, still apply. The details, with links to Anthropic's policies, are on our card data page.
What about prayer requests written on the card?
Your administrator decides whether Connections extracts and saves prayer requests. Either way, the whole card image is sent to Anthropic to be read; turning a field off does not hide it on the image. When prayer requests are saved, they go only to a Planning Center note category your church chooses, so the people who can see that category are the people who see the request.
Do we need special hardware or an app?
No. Any phone with a camera and a web browser works. Staff sign in with their Planning Center account and take the pictures in the browser.
Can it read forms other than our connect card?
Yes, with the custom card types add-on, which is $49 once. An administrator uploads a filled-in sample of the form, Connections proposes the fields, and you adjust them and choose where each one goes in Planning Center. Without the add-on, Connections reads your connect card.
Who can use Connections at our church?
A Planning Center organization administrator signs in first to set up your church. After that, anyone with Editor or Manager permission in Planning Center People can sign in and review cards.
What happens to our data if we stop?
Everything you approved is in Planning Center People and stays there. Card images and extracted details in Connections are deleted on the schedule your administrator set.
Try it on this Sunday's cards
Sign in with your church's Planning Center account. Your first 20 cards are free, and no credit card is needed.
Questions first? info@thechurchrocket.com