How do I check in at a church?

A check-in is how you record a visit. It is the heart of Sacred Steps. Every check-in becomes part of your own journey record.

Find the church

Open the Explore tab. You can search for a church by name, or browse the churches nearest to you. Tap a church to open its page.

If you cannot find the church you are standing in, it may not be in our records yet. Email us and we will look at adding it.

Check in

1. On the church page, tap Check In.
2. The app asks for permission to use your location. See below for what this changes.
3. Add anything you want to keep: a photo, a short note, a rating, or a private reflection.
4. Submit the check-in.

Nothing on the form is required except the church itself. A check-in with no photo and no words is still a check-in.

About the location prompt

The first time you check in, the app asks to use your location while you are using it. You can say no. If you say no, you can still check in and the check-in is saved normally.

Location matters for one thing: the passport stamp. Sacred Steps uses your location to confirm you were near the church. If no location is captured, the check-in is saved but a stamp is not awarded. The app tells you which of the two happened on the screen straight after you submit.

What you get

• A passport stamp, when your location confirms you were near the church. Stamps live in your passport, which you reach from the Profile tab under My Passport.
• An entry in your journey, with whatever photo and words you added.
• Progress towards badges, which are awarded for patterns of visits rather than for any single check-in.

If you are somewhere with no signal

Churches are often built of thick stone, and signal inside them can be poor. If a check-in will not submit, you can save it and send it later. Saved check-ins wait for you under Drafts, in the menu on your profile.

If a stamp did not appear when you expected one, read why did my passport stamp not appear.