House fellowship routing

From a real church engagement · 2026-10-31 church pack

First-timers and new members choose the area they live in from a short list. Each area belongs to a house fellowship, and that fellowship's leaders get a task to invite the person. People outside the listed areas go to the follow-up team to place by hand.

Spec: /playbooks/church/house-fellowship-routing.yaml · playbook id church.house-fellowship-routing · installs 6 drafts, everything lands off.

When to use it

You run house fellowships, cell groups or small groups by area, and want every newcomer offered one near them.
Each fellowship has a leader or two who can take a task.
You already have a first-timer card or membership form (for example from the First-timer to member playbook).

Where the data comes from

How	What
A form people fill in	The area question this playbook adds to your intake forms.

What it sets up

Kind	Name	What it does	Lands
Team	Follow-up team	Places people who live outside the listed areas.	Empty
Team one per fellowship	Fellowship: ‹name›	The fellowship's leaders; they get the invitation tasks.	Empty
Group one per fellowship	House fellowship: ‹name›	The fellowship itself, so members can be added to it once they join.	Ready
Form questions	Area question on each intake form	Adds "Which area do you live in?" (one choice) and a free-text area for "somewhere else" to each intake form.	Draft change
Follow-up one per fellowship	Fellowship: ‹name› placement	When someone chooses this fellowship's area, its leaders get a task to invite them.	Off
Follow-up	Fellowship: other areas, place by hand	People who chose "somewhere else" go to the placement team.	Off

The questions it asks

#	Question	Default	Fills in
1	What are your house fellowships, and which area does each cover? One line per fellowship. The area text is what people see on the form.	North, Central, South	`fellowships`
2	Which forms should ask for the area? (usually the first-timer card and the membership class form)	first-timer-card, membership-class	`intake_forms`
3	Who places people who live outside the listed areas?	Follow-up team	`placement_team`
4	How many hours do fellowship leaders have to reach out?	72	`invite_due_hours`

Other settings

These have defaults. Change any that don’t fit.

Setting	Default	Key
The "somewhere else" option on the form	Somewhere else	`other_label`
Name prefix for fellowship teams	Fellowship:	`team_prefix`

Timings

The task is created a couple of minutes after the form, so the area is saved on the person first.
Fellowship leaders have 72 hours; Origamy reminds them halfway and at the due time.
Every submission that answers the area question routes again, so someone who comes back as a new member is offered a fellowship again.

Channels

None. This playbook sends no messages; it only creates tasks for your teams, which reach them in Origamy and by the notifications they've chosen.

What you need to do

Add each fellowship's leaders to its team (Settings → Collaborators → Teams), and the placement team's people to Follow-up team.
Review the area question on each form, then publish the forms. A published question can't change type; to change it later, add a new question with a new key.
To add a fellowship later: add an option to the area question, create its team and group, and copy one of the fellowship follow-ups with the new area. Or run this playbook again with the new line only.
Switch on one follow-up per fellowship, plus the catch-all.

Notes

Use a fixed list, not the address. The first version matched the address’s “City or area” against patterns for each fellowship. Spellings varied too much, and adding a fellowship meant editing patterns. A radio question with one option per area is exact, and the “somewhere else” option catches everyone outside the list.
Ask on every intake form. A fellowship hears about someone once as a first-timer and again if they become a member, which is what the church wanted.
A published question can’t change type. If you change the area question from a dropdown to radio buttons after publishing, give it a new key (the church moved from house_fellowship to fellowship_area) and point the follow-ups at the new key.

Copilot eval

The request used to test the copilot on this playbook (a live eval) as a church workspace:

Our house fellowships take members by location: North, Central and South. Add an area question to the first-timer card and the membership class form, and when someone picks an area, give that fellowship's leaders a task to invite them. Anyone outside those areas should go to the follow-up team to place by hand. How do we add a fellowship later?

It passes when every piece is a valid draft and everything lands off, with at least: workflow, team, form. It must never use: discount, cart, checkout, purchase, revenue, customers.