Church Partnership Program
The workflow, systems, and narrative we use to bring a church from first conversation to a fully activated partner on the BetterFaith platform.
Why this exists
Before we walk through the mechanics, everyone on the team should be able to say why BetterFaith exists in plain, warm language. These are the two anchors we return to on every call.
We believe discipleship and gospel-led biblical counseling should be accessible. That is why, when able, we ask churches to subsidize or cover sessions for their congregations. It is also why we give back financially and donate an allotment of sessions for church staff. If a pastor is pouring out, someone needs to be pouring into them, and it should not depend on whether they can afford it.
We built BetterFaith because people are yearning for something like never before. They turn to content, to AI, to whatever is readily available, and until today there has not been a place for them to explore, grow, wrestle, ask their questions, and have someone real pray over them and pour into them. The church has always been the place for this. We are simply making it reachable on a Tuesday night at 9pm from a phone.
Every partnership supplements the local church. It never replaces the pastor, the elders, or the community around a congregant.
We know the logistics. Vetting counselors, matching by theology, scheduling, billing, reporting, safety. The church gets to focus on shepherding.
Who owns what
Three named owners today. As the team grows we will fill in the rest, but for now every church knows exactly which of us handles what.
| Owner & title | Internal title | What lands here |
|---|---|---|
| Caleb Church Partnerships Lead (external) |
Growth Strategist | Discovery calls, partnership scoping, closing, pipeline. Every new church conversation starts with Caleb. |
| Cole Head of People |
CPO / Head of People | Welcome calls, ongoing pastor relationship, 90-day check-ins, congregation-facing warmth, church network stewardship. |
| Dakota CEO |
CEO (finance & tech) | Agreement generation from Admin, billing setup, platform provisioning, roadmap conversations, escalations that touch the product or the ledger. |
| TBD | Ongoing partner success | Backfill role. Sits under Cole today. |
| TBD | Clinical safety lead | Backfill role for crisis triage and mandatory reporting workflows. Covered by on-call founder today. |
| TBD | Ops & billing | Backfill role. Sits under Dakota today. |
Primary owner in bold. Secondaries can step in for coverage without breaking continuity.
| Stage | Primary | Also available |
|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 · Sales & discovery | Caleb | Cole, Dakota |
| Stage 2 · Platform onboarding & provisioning | Dakota | Caleb, Cole |
| Stage 3 · Welcome call & launch | Cole | Caleb, Dakota |
| Stage 4 · Ongoing portal & digest | Cole | Dakota (tech), Caleb (expansion) |
| Stage 5 · Billing & account | Dakota | Cole (relationship-side questions) |
| Stage 6 · Crisis escalation | On-call founder | All three, rotation TBD once clinical safety lead is hired |
First 90 days
From signed agreement to a fully activated church. The bar is that no partner sits in silence between milestones.
Sent from Admin. Provisioning kicks off automatically.
Platform overview Loom sent. Onboarding intake form opens.
Portal walkthrough, referral links, crisis protocol, prayer.
Bulletin, QR code, pulpit script, and site page go live.
Weekly digest lands. Cole checks in on match volume.
Utilization review, doctrinal fit check, expansion path.
Stage one
Caleb owns every new church conversation from first touch through signed agreement. Cole and Dakota come in when the moment calls for it.
A pastor fills out the church partnership form, replies to a cold email, gets referred by another pastor, or raises their hand at an event. Every engagement gets a same-day human response.
Response is a warm reply plus Caleb's personal scheduling link for a 30 minute discovery conversation. Caleb runs the call and owns the pipeline. Cole joins when a relational moment calls for it (denomination fit, staff care conversation). Dakota joins when the pastor wants to talk finance model or platform depth.
Every teammate who takes church calls must keep a working scheduling link (Notion Calendar, Cal.com, or Calendly) connected to their BetterFaith email. That is how the initial call gets on the calendar without a back-and-forth. Caleb books via caleb@betterfaith.com, Cole via cole@betterfaith.com, Dakota via dakota@betterfaith.com.
Use these as guardrails, not a script. The goal is to hear the pastor's world and confirm fit in about 20 minutes.
Within 24 hours of the call, Caleb sends the written recap and the partnership program overview. Dakota generates the partnership agreement from the BetterFaith platform (Admin surface) so the signed record lives on the church's account from day one. If they are moving to Care Sponsor, pricing and pack size are locked in the agreement.
Signature triggers provisioning and the internal handoff from Caleb (sales) to Cole (relationships). Cole becomes the pastor's primary human on the BetterFaith side for the first 90 days. Caleb stays copied on the intro email so nothing feels dropped.
On the call
Pastors have every reason to be careful about who they invite into their people's spiritual lives. These are the top objections we hear and how we respond. Never talk them out of a concern. Meet it directly.
| What they say | How we respond |
|---|---|
| "We already have counselors on staff." | Beautiful, they should stay. BetterFaith is for the moments your staff cannot cover: after-hours, capacity overflow, sensitive topics people are not ready to bring to a staff pastor, and staff care itself. We supplement, we never replace. |
| "How is this different from therapy?" | We are explicit that this is spiritual care, discipleship, and biblical counseling. It is not therapy, treatment, diagnosis, or clinical care. If a congregant needs licensed clinical work, our counselors refer out. We tell them that on day one, and it is in our scope-of-practice language. |
| "What if a counselor teaches something we don't agree with?" | Theology matching is the first thing we do. We take your doctrinal statement and match congregants only with counselors who align. You can review counselor profiles in the portal before anyone sees them, and you can flag or remove any counselor from your congregation's pool. |
| "We cannot afford this right now." | Then we talk about Care Partner (free) or a smaller Session Pack. We would rather have you in the network at zero cost than nowhere. And if you can subsidize even a few sessions, we can help you communicate that generously to your congregation. |
| "What happens if someone tells your counselor they are going to hurt themselves?" | Our crisis protocol kicks in immediately. Counselor triages, escalates to our clinical safety lead, and if consent allows, we loop in the crisis contact you gave us at onboarding. We can walk through the full protocol on the welcome call. See the crisis section of this playbook. |
| "What about privacy and what we see in the digest?" | You see aggregate patterns, never confidential content. No congregant is named in the digest unless they explicitly consent to being flagged back to you for pastoral follow-up. We show you exactly what you will and will not see before you sign. |
| "This feels like outsourcing pastoral care." | That is not the vision. You are still the shepherd. We are the reachable-on-a-Tuesday-night backup that keeps your people from turning to content or AI when you cannot be reached. Every counselor is trained to point congregants back to the local church, not away from it. |
Stage two
Once the agreement is signed, we collect the fields we need to build their portal, brand their landing page, and configure billing.
| Field | What we use it for |
|---|---|
| Church legal name Required | Partnership agreement, invoices, tax records |
| Public display name Required | Branded portal, congregation-facing landing page, digest emails |
| Primary contact (name, role, email, phone) Required | Dashboard access, digest recipient, invoice routing |
| Additional dashboard users Optional | Multi-seat access for care team, exec pastor, admin |
| Mailing address Required | Invoicing, agreement, physical materials if requested |
| Denomination and doctrinal statement Required | Theology matching so congregants see aligned counselors first |
| Church logo (SVG or high-res PNG) Required | Branded portal header, landing page, digest emails |
| Brand colors and hero photo Optional | Applied to the dedicated landing page on betterfaith.com |
| Congregation size (approx.) Required | Sponsor pack sizing, digest benchmarks, expansion planning |
| Referral URL slug Required | betterfaith.com/church/{slug} vanity URL for congregation |
| Billing model (Subsidized or Session Packs) Required | Determines Stripe configuration, invoicing cadence, and portal state |
| Stripe payment method or ACH details Required | Attached only for the chosen billing model, see Stage 5 |
| Staff counseling allotment recipients Optional | Names or emails of pastors and staff receiving donated sessions |
| Crisis and mandatory reporting contact Required | Who we call if a congregant discloses risk of harm |
| Preferred digest day and recipients Required | Weekly congregation digest email routing |
Stage three
Once their account is provisioned, Cole hosts a 45 minute welcome call. This is a warm human moment, not a training session. Training happens in the platform.
Before the welcome call, we record a Loom that overviews the platform. It is sent in advance so the pastor can pre-watch or share with staff, and it lives inside the portal for reference. The onboarding call is not the first time they see the product.
Safety
This is the section every pastor asks about, sometimes not until session three or four. We proactively walk through it on the welcome call, and it is documented in the portal so any staff member can find it fast.
Counselor stays with the congregant, activates emergency services (911), and notifies BetterFaith's on-call clinical safety lead within 10 minutes. Church crisis contact is looped in as soon as the congregant is safe or has consented.
Naming a real crisis contact at onboarding. That person will get a call at odd hours if someone in their congregation is in danger. It should be someone with pastoral authority and after-hours availability. Ideally two names, primary and backup.
Stage four
This is what the pastor and their team have access to once they are onboarded. Everything is designed for non-technical church staff.
Stage five
Two billing models, one platform. The model is chosen at agreement signing and configured during onboarding.
Charged at the end of the month, in arrears.
Charged via Stripe inside the platform at time of purchase.
Either model, no session is ever charged to a congregant without them knowing what it costs and what their church is covering. Transparency at the point of match is a hard rule.
Stage six
Onboarding is not a one-and-done handoff. Two ongoing rituals keep the church close to us and close to their congregation.
Every partner receives a weekly email digest on their preferred day. It surfaces the pastoral picture without breaching confidentiality.
We show the digest to the pastor on the welcome call so nothing about it feels like a surprise. This is the boundary we hold:
Every partner is added to our Church Network mailing list. This is not a marketing list. It is a small, curated channel for:
Activation
Signing a partnership does nothing if the congregation never hears about it. Cole delivers this kit at the welcome call so the pastor can go live on the next Sunday.
Branded QR that routes to betterfaith.com/church/{slug}. Print-ready PDF, plus a 24"x36" poster template for the lobby.
Half-page insert with the pastor's own words at the top. Two versions: card-style and column-style. Editable in Canva template.
60-second announcement the pastor or care lead can read from the stage. Written in warm second-person, ends with the QR.
Single 16:9 slide that drops into ProPresenter or Keynote. Church logo alongside BetterFaith mark.
Pre-written SMS or Planning Center message the pastor can send to a list. Includes short link and one line of context.
One-pager small-group leaders can hand out privately when a member surfaces a need. Very quiet, very pastoral.
Two-page brief for the church's internal care team so they know when to hand a request to BetterFaith and when to keep it in-house.
Square and story-format graphics for church socials, in the church's brand palette. Optional. Some churches prefer word-of-mouth only.
We never launch a church to their congregation until the pastor has personally seen and approved every asset. The launch kit is delivered as drafts, not finals. The pastor's voice always wins over ours.
Ongoing
At day 90, Cole runs a warm health review with the pastor. This is not a sales call. It is the moment we honestly ask whether this is working, and either recommit or adjust.
If the church started as a Care Partner and is seeing real congregation demand, this is the natural moment to talk about upgrading to Care Sponsor. If they started as Care Sponsor, we discuss right-sizing the pack or subsidy for the next quarter. Caleb rejoins the call only if the expansion conversation gets serious.
If it needs to change
Not every season fits every partnership. We would rather a church pause well than churn quietly. This is the policy we share on the welcome call so it never feels awkward later.
In one sentence
A church signs on Monday, receives a Loom on Tuesday, hits their welcome call on Thursday, has referral links in Sunday's bulletin, and sees their first digest the following Friday. That is the bar.
Pastors feel supported, not sold to. Congregants feel their church is looking out for them, not outsourcing them. Counselors get matched with people who are actually a fit. And we get to keep pouring back into the churches that trust us.