Our church uses a church record keeping solution called Realm®. It primarily serves the administrative needs of our staff, but it also offers some exciting opportunities to support the way we are all involved in our church. Not only will this improve the effectiveness of our staff, it will also make it easier for everyone in our church family to connect with each other, keep up with what’s going on, and grow as a connected community of believers.
Tomorrow morning, every member for whom we have a working email address will get an email inviting them to join our online community (Click Here to see an example). Don’t forget to look in your junk mail or spam folder, as sometimes this email will end up there. If you do find it in junk mail, make Realm a trusted source.
Click the link in the middle of the email highlighted in blue. This will take you to the registration page (Click Here to see an example). Your email address will be here, and this page will ask you to create a password. Passwords must be at least 8 characters and use a mix of uppercase/lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Do not use any part of your email address in the password, and please use a unique password. You will need to remember your password, as we will not have any record of it at the church. If you do forget it, we can send a password reset so that you can put in a new one. Check the box indicating you are not a robot, then click ‘Register’.
This will generate another email (Click Here to see an example). If you found the first one in junk mail, and you didn’t make Realm a trusted source, you will find this one in junk mail also. You will want to change this or you will miss other messages from the staff and from your Bethesda friends. This new email will ask you to verify your email. I know it seems redundant, but this follows best practices in online security. Follow the instructions. This will lead you to Bethesda’s online community (Click Here to see an example).
Now that you are a part of our online community you will want to edit your profile. In the upper right hand corner click on your name and choose ‘My Profile’ (Click Here to see an example). Click the ‘Edit Profile’ button (Click Here to see an example). Here you will enter all your correct and latest information. Be sure and hit the save button when you are done. Take some time to look around in Realm. Next week, we will walk through joining groups.
If at any point you get stuck, call (561) 853-0969. Operators will be standing by (Monday through Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.). By operators I mean our loyal Bethesda staff. This number directly rings a team of our staff whose primary focus for the next several weeks is to help us all get connected and set up in Realm. We want this to be a good experience so we are here to help.
Fred Staley
Associate for Administration