trellus Keeping big churches small.

See the signal,
not the noise.

Trellus distills the operational signal from your kids ministry data, so you can shepherd people, not systems. Ministry is hard. Operations shouldn’t be.

Planning Center tells you what happened. Trellus tells you what’s about to happen.

Built inside Storyline Church. Opening to a founding cohort before launch.

How it works

We tend the data so you can tend the flock.

No new spreadsheets. No new logins for your team. Planning Center stays the system of record — Trellus reads it, and reads ahead.

01 / Weekly Intelligence

Walk in Monday knowing who needs you.

Every weekend, Trellus reads the room — each accept, decline, no-show, and check-in — and weighs every volunteer and first-time family across more than two dozen behavioral signals, against their own history, not a blanket rule. By Monday you have a triaged list: who’s thriving, who’s slipping, who needs a conversation now — and you decide what it means.

  • A triaged follow-up list. Act now, this week, or just keep an eye out — each person measured against their own normal, not a blanket rule.
  • The week families slip away. A survival curve shows where first-time families have stopped coming back, so a first visit becomes a habit.
  • Signals, not verdicts. You see the change in behavior. You bring the relationship.
The Trellus health dashboard Overview — a weekly read on the team: who needs follow-up now (Act now, This week, Watch), total volunteers, and the positions running short.

02 / Workflow Automation

Build the next eight Sundays in one click.

Auto-build the whole roster in seconds. When someone drops, Trellus weighs years of serving history to suggest the substitutes most likely to say yes — and writes it back to Planning Center for you.

  • Full schedule, or just the gaps. Build weeks ahead, or fill only the open slots without touching anyone already serving.
  • The right ask, first. Every name is scored, not sorted: a behavioral model weighs how much they’ve served that exact room, how often they say yes, how reliably they show up, and how recently you’ve asked — so the first suggestion is likely to accept, and you’re not over-asking your faithful few.
  • Planning Center stays in charge. Every assignment lands back in PCO as one clear request. No second system, no double emails.
The Trellus Schedule Matrix — a live staffing grid of every room across each service time, with critical gaps flagged in red and one-click Fill open gaps and Propose full schedule actions.

03 / Ministry Outcomes

Know which families are about to stop coming.

Planning Center counts check-ins. Trellus reads them — every family’s attendance rhythm weighed against their own history — and tells you which families are quietly slipping away, while a text or a visit can still bring them back.

  • At-risk families, by urgency. Households that were regular and have gone quiet for weeks, sorted by how reachable they still are — so you go to the ones who need you first, not a flat list.
  • First-timers who didn’t come back. Every new family tracked from their first visit: who’s turning into a habit, and who slipped after week one while a follow-up still lands.
  • Reach, retention, activation. The numbers your executive pastor actually asks for — how many families you’re holding, how many new ones stuck — not vanity metrics.
The Trellus Ministry Outcomes dashboard — reach, retention, engagement and activation across families, with an At-Risk tab listing previously-regular households now gone three or more weeks, each card showing its multi-year attendance trajectory and tier history.

04 / Appreciation

Catch the moments worth celebrating.

Trellus watches for the anniversaries, milestones, comebacks, and quietly faithful you’d otherwise miss, then drafts a note built on the real fact — ready for you to make personal and send.

  • The moments, found for you. A serving anniversary, a 100th Sunday, a return after time away, a quarter of perfect attendance.
  • Their own numbers, not hollow praise. Every draft names the real fact. You add the warmth.
  • Only the people still serving. Nothing fires for someone who quietly stepped away.
The Trellus appreciation dashboard — tabs for anniversaries, serve counts, comebacks and quiet heroes, milestone counts, and a This Sunday list of volunteers to celebrate in person.

Why Trellus

Ministry is hard. Operations shouldn’t be.

There are two kinds of hard in kids ministry. Only one of them needs a person.

Ministry-hard

Pastoral conversations, discipleship, family care, prayer, presence. The work that only a person can do — and should.

Trellus doesn’t touch this.

Operations-hard

Scheduling, updating spreadsheets, tracking patterns, finding gaps, chasing follow-ups. Software-shaped work that’s been eating human-shaped time.

Trellus handles this.

Let tech do the mundane, so humans do what only humans can.

Sunday is going to come either way.

See what’s about to happen this week — while there’s still time to do something about it.