Connect with the pastors, staff, and congregation by joining Realm!
Here is a brief video with an overview of Realm.
What is Realm? Realm is a real ministry.
Realm is an online ministry tool designed for real time connection. It helps Augsburg connect with you and you connect with us. If you consider yourself part of the Augsburg community, we think you’ll love it. Realm allows you to manage your personal information and who is allowed to see it, control your giving, and keep in touch with the groups that matter to you.
Why use Realm? Realm strengthens church connections.
Being the church doesn’t just happen at the church. Realm helps us serve you better and will help connect you to Augsburg to facilitate Ministry Teams, and any other group that carries out the mission of the congregation. Everyone can be connected from anywhere at any time, from your email, your computer and even right from your mobile devices. It has the capacity to engage everyone in the life of our church by supporting healthy relationships within the congregation. We’ll stay organized, and you’ll stay informed about all of the opportunities for worship, witness, education, service, and fellowship. When we share life together, we will grow together.
What will I do with Realm?
You will be able to do a few things to begin with, and more as we ramp up usage of Realm.
Right away you’ll be able to review your personal information in your profile. This is the information that Augsburg has about you and your family. It might be complete and accurate. It might be sketchy or have errors. You can update most of it. Anything in your profile that is proceeded by an “SS” is information that came over from the old system. Anything that is proceeded by a “TT” is information gleaned from 2018 Time and Talent forms. Other fields show bits of data that Realm uses, or that we have added. This information is yours to share. You manage the visibility of your profile. (See the next section for more on privacy.)
You will also see column of tabs along the left sidebar for communications. These will be communications sent from/to the people in the groups that you participate with. Below communications, you will see a tab for events for the groups that you participate with.
You will see a tab for groups. This tab shows the groups that we know, or think, that you are involved with. You will also see a place where you can search for groups to join.
If you are a group leader, you will be able to set up events and take attendance—attendance is a huge piece of data that will help us improve engagement. You will be able to send emails to your group. You will be able to have “text like” conversations with your team as well.
You will also see a tab for Giving. You can view giving history, your pledge if you made one, and where you stand in relation to your pledge. (See another section below with more about giving.)
The last tab is a Directory. This list will show the names of people in groups that you belong to. The amount of information you will find for others is dependent upon the privacy settings that person has selected.
What about my privacy? Realm is safe, private, and secure.
Your privacy is one of our greatest concerns. Realm is only made up of the people in your church, it’s not like a social network that’s open to everyone. Realm keeps your data safe and gives you control over what information you share and who can see it. Social media is an important facet of the congregation’s communications and we’ll continue to use it, but Realm will provide a more consistent and secure digital level to our communications.
What about giving? Realm gives you control over your giving.
Giving should be easy, and Realm makes giving easily accessible through your personal login. From your computer or your mobile device. You may set up recurring gifts, view your giving history, and make changes at any time. Realm automatically records all electronic gifts and adds them to your giving record making it easy for you to give, and easy for our financial secretary to manage the congregations giving.
How do I start? Follow a few simple steps.
You will need an invitation from Augsburg to join Realm. If you haven’t received one yet, contact Michaelene Wirth or Kevin Kooken and we’ll send you an email invite. We may have the information that we need, but if not, you can expect to provide the following information to begin the process. We’ll need the email address you want to use, your birthdate, and your primary phone number.
We’ll send you an invitation by email.
You’ll receive an email invitation. When you click the link it will open your default browser and take you to the Registration Screen. It will look like this. The system uses your email address as your unique identifier. If you share an email address with your spouse this may be a little confusing. We encourage you use personal email addresses for each person to improve your experience with Realm. You will need to create a log-in password following the guidelines that Realm will show you. If you have any trouble getting logged in, contact Kevin Kooken for help.
Once you’ve successfully logged in, you can check to make sure that we have your address and other personal information entered correctly under My Profile. If anything is incorrect, or you want to change something, you should be able to change it.
Is there an App for Realm? Yes! Download the app and connect from your mobile device.
You can connect to Realm from your mobile device by downloading the Connect App, which is available for MacOS and Android.
Find Realm Connect App for Mac OS
Find Realm Connect App for Android
What if I have more questions? Check out these help documents.
Find out more about what you can do on Realm with these Help Guides.
If you are a group leader, find out more about the things you can do to manage your group with Realm. Realm Leader Help Guides.
