Core Concepts
Understanding these five concepts will make the rest of the documentation much easier to follow.
1. Branches
A branch is a single church location. Every piece of data in Kairos — members, departments, fellowships, outreach programs, attendance records — belongs to a branch. Branches are the primary unit of organisation.
Each branch has:
- A name, type (Main, Satellite, Campus, etc.), city, and contact details
- A home region
- A Main Pastor and optional Elders
- Its own set of members, fellowships, and departments
Branches cannot see each other's data unless you are an Admin.
2. Members
A member is any registered person in the system. Members have a home branch and can belong to one fellowship and up to two departments within that branch.
Member status can be:
- Pending — registered but not yet approved
- Approved / Active — full access granted
- Inactive — soft-deleted, history preserved
3. Roles & Grants
Kairos uses two system-level roles (admin and member) but real permissions come from functional grants. A grant is a named role bundle tied to a specific scope — a branch, fellowship, or department.
For example, a member with a FellowshipLeader grant for "Grace K-Group" can manage that fellowship but nothing outside it. The same member with a DepartmentLeader grant for "Choir at Kharis London" can manage that department separately.
See Roles & Permissions for the full breakdown.
4. The Souls Pipeline
Kairos tracks the journey of people reached through evangelism. A soul is someone captured during an outreach event. They move through a pipeline:
New → Following Up → Interested → Converted
Once converted, they can be enrolled in the New Believers discipleship track, which has four sessions before they integrate into a department as a full member.
5. Soft Deletes
Nothing is permanently deleted in Kairos. Deactivating a member, fellowship, or department preserves all history — attendance records, follow-up notes, and role assignments remain intact. This is important for reporting and accountability.