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Messages is where conversation happens — as opposed to the community feed, which is where notices happen.

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Two kinds

Channels

One-to-many. Leadership posts, the congregation reads. A ministry team, a small group, a whole-church notice board.

Direct messages

One-to-one. Admin to admin, and admin to member.

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Who can start a conversation

An admin can start a direct message with anyone in the church. A member can reply, and can message an admin, but cannot start a conversation with another member.
This is deliberate. A church directory that lets any member message any other member is a different product with different safeguarding implications, and Harvest does not do it.

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Attaching records

An admin composing a message sees a paperclip. It opens a menu with four categories: Each shows your recent items, and Browse opens a search across all four at once.
The common use is sending somebody a form in a conversation rather than emailing them a link — they open it where they already are.

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Members do not see the paperclip

A member’s composer has no attachment button. They can write and reply; they cannot attach a church record.

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On a phone

Inside a conversation the bottom menu gets out of the way and the message box stays pinned to the bottom of the screen, so it does not drift while you read back through a thread.

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What Messages is not

Messages is not a pastoral care system and it is not confidential in any legal sense. An admin with the right permission can read the conversations they are part of, and a church’s data can be exported.For anything genuinely confidential, have the conversation in person.

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Channels versus the feed

A useful rule of thumb:
  • The feed is for things the whole church needs once — a notice, a photo, a poll.
  • A channel is for things a few people need often — the worship team’s week, the deacons’ running conversation.
Put both in one place and people stop reading either.