What app do church Sunday schools and youth groups use?

St. Cuthbert's in West Bridgford, Nottingham uses Bitir, with one private group per band — a children's Sunday school and a teenage youth group. Each child has an individual goal, a weekly reflection the church calls a 'faith journal', a register, and parent updates, all in one place. The church replaced a whole-congregation WhatsApp group and a paper register with this setup, which lifted weekly reflection completion and Sunday attendance across both bands.

How do you get teenagers to engage with a weekly church check-in?

Name it for what it means to them and keep their answers private. At St. Cuthbert's the weekly check-in was renamed a 'faith journal' and set so each teenager's entry is visible only to the youth leader, not the whole group or their parents. Completion rose from 29% to 81% once teenagers could write honestly without performing for peers or being read by family. The framing and the privacy did the work, not a longer questionnaire.

How does a church keep a safeguarding-friendly attendance record?

By taking a short digital register inside the same app that holds the groups, so attendance is recorded consistently and produces a term view per child without transcription. At St. Cuthbert's a volunteer marks the register in the first two minutes of each session; a child absent two weeks running prompts an automatic note to their family, which the minister follows up pastorally. This satisfies the record-keeping the Church of England's safeguarding guidance expects and turns a blank box into pastoral follow-up.

Community · Church Children's & Youth Ministry

How a Nottingham church renamed its weekly check-ins "faith journals" and got teenagers answering

Hannah Fairweather is the children's and youth minister at St. Cuthbert's, West Bridgford — a Church of England parish in Nottingham running a children's Sunday school and a teenage youth group, 41 young people in all. One term after moving off a whole-congregation WhatsApp group and a paper register, weekly reflection completion had risen from 29% to 81% and Sunday attendance from 64% to 87%.

Published 21 June 2026 9 min read Nottingham, United Kingdom

TL;DR

Hannah Fairweather runs the children's and youth ministry at a Nottingham parish — a 5–10s Sunday school and an 11–15s youth group, 41 young people across four rotating volunteers. Reflections, attendance, and parent messages lived in one busy congregation WhatsApp group and a clipboard nobody could read back. One private Bitir group per band — with an individual goal per young person, a weekly reflection renamed a "faith journal", a two-minute register, and parent updates — lifted weekly reflection completion from 29% to 81%, Sunday attendance from 64% to 87%, term-on-term retention from 58% to 84%, and brought every volunteer onto the same page. Her Sunday-evening admin fell from about two hours to twenty-five minutes.

Hannah Fairweather

Children's & Youth Minister · St. Cuthbert's, West Bridgford, Nottingham

Where St. Cuthbert's started

Hannah took the children's and youth role at St. Cuthbert's in 2022, inheriting a Sunday school of around twenty and a youth group that met after the main service. By 2025 the two bands had grown to 41 young people, taught and supervised by four volunteers on a rota.

The ministry was warm. The organisation was a phone full of messages.

Everything ran through one congregation WhatsApp group: rota swaps, nativity logistics, the occasional safeguarding-sensitive note that absolutely should not have been there, and parents asking what their child had done that week. Attendance was a clipboard a volunteer filled in at the door, and the reflections Hannah set for the teenagers — a question to think about during the week — were answered by almost nobody.

The backdrop is not unique to Nottingham. The Church of England's Statistics for Mission has charted a steady, long-running fall in the number of under-16s in church on a Sunday. Hannah's view was blunt: if the few who came did not feel that anyone noticed whether they turned up, the trend would simply continue in West Bridgford.

The breaking point

It was a reflection question that landed, for once, and then vanished into the chat.

Hannah had asked the youth group to think about a reading and message her if anything struck them. One teenager did — a genuine, vulnerable few sentences — and sent it to the only channel she had given them, the shared WhatsApp group, where two adults and a dozen other families could read it. The girl deleted it within the minute.

"That was the moment," Hannah says. "A young person finally opened up and the only place I'd given her to do it was a group chat with other people's parents in it. I'd made honesty unsafe without realising."

The clipboard bothered her separately. A churchwarden had asked, reasonably, whether attendance was actually holding up, and Hannah could not answer without leafing through six weeks of paper. The information existed; it just could not be read back.

"A young person finally opened up and the only place I'd given her to do it was a group chat with other people's parents in it. I'd made honesty unsafe without realising."

Why St. Cuthbert's chose Bitir

Hannah had seen Bitir used by a Saturday madrasa across the city and asked to look at it. Two things decided it.

The first was private, per-person reflections. A teenager's weekly entry could be set to reach only the youth leader — not the group, not their parents — which made an honest answer safe in a way the WhatsApp group never could. The second was one group per band, so the under-10s and the teenagers were properly separated, each with its own register, its own goals, and only the parents attached to it.

Then Hannah made the change that mattered most, and it was not technical. She renamed the weekly reflection a "faith journal". Same field, same cadence, completely different uptake. "Check-in" sounded like being marked; "faith journal" sounded like something that belonged to the young person.

"I didn't change the question. I changed the name and who could see the answer. That was the whole trick."

How St. Cuthbert's set it up

Hannah moved the youth group across first, then the Sunday school two weeks later. Each band now runs the same way:

One private group per band. Invite-only, parents added by phone number; younger children shown by first name and initial, teenagers by the name they chose.
An individual goal per young person. One line they helped write — "read the opening at the carol service", "learn the books of the New Testament", "welcome whoever's new" — visible only to that young person, their parent where appropriate, and the leader.
A weekly "faith journal". One short reflection question, with each teenager's entry private to the youth leader, and the children's version kept gentle and optional.
A two-minute register. Marked at the start of each session by whichever volunteer is on, giving a term view per child.
Parent updates that push. An absence note after two missed weeks, a short nudge when a child meets a goal, and one Sunday-afternoon summary per band with a question to ask at home.
Manager-only announcements. Rota and logistics posted once, with the safeguarding-sensitive conversations kept off the shared surface entirely.

For the faith-journal wording Hannah followed the privacy principles in our guide to member privacy modes, and she set the whole thing up class-by-class using the Sunday school management toolkit.

Results after one term

29% → 81%Weekly "faith journal" completion

64% → 87%Sunday attendance

58% → 84%Term-on-term retention

The faith-journal number is the one Hannah did not expect. A private, well-named reflection turned out to be a completely different thing from a public "check-in" nobody answered. Teenagers wrote honestly because they were not performing for the group or being read by family, and Hannah could respond to each one privately during the week.

Attendance stopped being a guess. With the register taken every week and a term view she could actually read, Hannah spotted the two families drifting before they left, made a quiet call, and kept both. Term-on-term retention rose from 58% to 84% — the clearest sign, she thinks, that young people who feel noticed stay.

The admin saving is the quiet one. Her Sunday evening used to mean about two hours of reading back the chat and writing notes. It is now around twenty-five minutes, because the register is already taken, the journals are already in, and the parent summary is two lines per band.

"For the first time I can tell the churchwardens exactly who's coming and who's slipping, and I can do it before we lose them rather than after."

What Hannah does in Bitir

One private group per band — a children's Sunday school and a teenage youth group, replacing one congregation-wide WhatsApp group.
Individual goals — one line per young person, visible only to them, their parent where appropriate, and the leader.
Weekly "faith journals" — a renamed reflection, each teenager's entry private to the youth leader.
A two-minute register — taken by the volunteer on rota, giving a term view per child.
Parent updates that push — absence notes, goal nudges, and one Sunday summary per band with a question to ask at home.
Manager-only announcements — rota and logistics once, with sensitive matters kept off the shared surface.

What's next

St. Cuthbert's is launching a young-leaders scheme next year, training two sixteen-year-olds to help run the children's Sunday school. Hannah plans to give them a helper role on that group — register and activities, but not settings or the private journals — so the ministry can grow without everything routing through one minister's phone. "The clipboard had a ceiling of one person," she says. "This doesn't, and it keeps the private things private."

Questions we're asked about this case

Is Bitir free for a church Sunday school or youth group?

Bitir is free for leaders running small private groups. A parish like St. Cuthbert's, with one group per band, can start at no cost. Larger plans with multi-leader access are available for churches that grow to need them. See Contact for a walkthrough.

Can teenagers' reflections be kept private from their parents?

Yes. A weekly "faith journal" entry can be set so it reaches only the youth leader — not the group and not the young person's parents. That privacy is exactly why completion at St. Cuthbert's rose from 29% to 81%; teenagers wrote honestly because they were not performing for peers or being read by family.

Does Bitir help with safeguarding record-keeping?

Bitir keeps a consistent digital register and a term view per child inside the same app as the groups, which supports the record-keeping the Church of England's safeguarding guidance expects. Sensitive conversations stay off the shared surface and route privately to the leader, rather than sitting in a congregation-wide chat.

Lead a Sunday school or church youth group?

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