Church directories are not particularly exciting software.
They are also surprisingly important.
A pastor may need a phone number while standing in the church hallway. A ministry leader may remember a family they need to contact while driving home. Someone may mention a prayer request after a service, and the moment to record it is before the conversation disappears into the rest of Sunday.
The information is usually already available somewhere. The problem is getting from the need to the person without losing the thread.
That is why I built Ministry Margin Directory.
01
The problem I kept encountering
Our church uses Planning Center throughout the week. It holds years of information about the people, services, teams, calendars, and ministry work our church depends on.
I am genuinely grateful for Planning Center. Ministry Margin Directory is not an attempt to replace it or build a new church database.
It came from a much smaller question:
What would it look like to make the people our church already has in Planning Center feel immediately available on an iPhone?
Most of the time, I am not trying to administer a database from my phone. I am trying to find someone. I may need to call a volunteer, text someone before an appointment, find an address before making a visit, or record a prayer request before I forget it.
Those are small tasks, but they happen constantly. Each one represents a person who needs attention.
02
A deliberately focused app
Ministry Margin Directory is not a complete church-management application squeezed onto a phone. It does not include reports, administrative editing, attendance, mass messaging, org charts, or volunteer scheduling. It does not try to recreate every Planning Center screen.
Instead, it concentrates on one job:
Find the person you need and take the next step.
You connect the app using your own Planning Center account. Ministry Margin Directory can prepare Everyone and the available Planning Center People lists your account has permission to access.
After that preparation is complete, you can move among those directory sources locally, choose the one that is most useful, and return directly to it the next time you open the app.
Your existing Planning Center permissions still apply. Ministry Margin Directory does not grant access to people your church has not already allowed your account to see.
03
Getting started
When you first open Directory, you can explore Demo Mode with fictional sample data or connect the Planning Center account your church already gave you. Demo Mode never connects to Planning Center and can be used without a subscription.
Live Planning Center access requires an active App Store subscription. Eligible new subscribers may receive an Apple-managed introductory trial, with the exact trial and renewal details shown before purchase.
- 1Sign in through Planning Center.
Directory uses Planning Center's OAuth sign-in and never asks you to enter your Planning Center password into the app.
- 2Let Directory prepare your permitted sources.
The app prepares Everyone, available People lists, their people, and profile images in protected local storage.
- 3Choose the directory that fits your work.
For many churches this will be a membership list. A care team, staff list, or volunteer list may be more useful in another setting.
04
Finding someone without the hunt
The main screen is intentionally simple. You see an alphabetical list of names and profile pictures, along with an alphabet index for moving quickly through a larger directory. Search is always close at hand.
Search by name, select the person, and the app opens a focused profile with the contact information and actions you are most likely to need.
From a profile to the next step
From a person's profile, you can call, text, email, or open directions using the appropriate Apple app. You can also long-press someone in the directory to open a compact set of quick actions without leaving the list.
The goal is not to keep you inside Ministry Margin Directory. The goal is to help you reach the person and then get out of the way.
Saving someone to Apple Contacts
Directory includes an explicit Save to Contacts action on each person's profile. Open the person, tap Save to Contacts, review the information, and save it.
This happens one person at a time. The app does not bulk-import your church directory or continuously synchronize everyone into Contacts. Your church directory and your personal Contacts database serve different purposes, so Directory helps you save the people you actually want without taking control of the entire address book.
05
Keeping prayer connected to people
Prayer is where Ministry Margin Directory becomes more than a contact launcher.
Prayer requests often end up scattered across notebooks, text messages, spreadsheets, conversations, and memory. Even when the request is written down, it can gradually become disconnected from the person who shared it.
In Directory, you can create a private prayer request directly from a person's profile. You can also swipe on someone in the directory and choose Pray. The request stays connected to that person, making it easier to remember the need, pray faithfully, and return later to follow up.
The app supports multiple active requests for the same person, along with general prayer requests that are not connected to anyone in the directory. Requests can be active, ongoing, or answered.
Prayer requests are not written back to Planning Center. They remain Ministry Margin app data stored on your device. If you enable Prayer iCloud Sync, they can sync through your private iCloud account with supported Ministry Margin apps. If you leave iCloud Sync off, they stay on the device where you created them.
06
Designed around sensitive information
Church data is people data.
Names, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, family relationships, and prayer requests are not abstract records. They belong to real people in the care of a church.
Ministry Margin Directory connects directly to Planning Center. Directory and prayer data are not sent to a Ministry Margin server. The Planning Center OAuth credential is stored using Apple's Keychain, and prepared directory information is kept in protected local storage. Prayer requests remain local unless you choose to enable private iCloud synchronization.
If your church removes your permission to access Planning Center People, the affected cached People information and person-linked prayers are removed from the app. General prayers remain.
The full Ministry Margin privacy policy explains these boundaries in more detail.
07
Why this app is small
It would be easy to keep adding features until Directory became another large application.
I do not think that would make it better.
Its value comes from being dependable and understandable. Open it, find someone, contact them, save them, pray for them, and follow up.
That is the whole shape of the app.
Ministry Margin Directory is the first released app in what I hope becomes a family of focused ministry tools. Some will connect to Planning Center. Others may help with ministry work that Planning Center was never intended to manage.
The common goal is not productivity for its own sake. It is reducing the friction around ministry so pastors and church staff have more room to be attentive to people.
Directory is a small beginning, but it represents the kind of software I want to keep building: thoughtful tools, shaped by the actual week of ministry, made to help the work without trying to become the point of it.
Available now for iPhone