The pipeline, drawn as tracks

# Pipeline, track, stage, step and role > Five words that are easy to mix up, side by side. A pipeline is the whole thing; a track is one direction of growth with its own stages; a stage is a column on a track; a step is one thing to do; a role is a place you need people. For: Everyone on the team Canonical: https://emmauos.com/docs/pipeline-words EmmauOS uses five words for how people grow and where you need them. They sit inside one another, so they are easy to mix up. | Word | What it is | In the demo | | --- | --- | --- | | **Pipeline** | The whole thing: the tracks people grow along and the roles they grow into. A church has one. | The **Pipeline** menu: Roles and Tracks. | | **Track** | One direction of growth, asking one question, with its own stages. A church has up to six; the first is its main track. | Belong, Become and Lead, or your own, such as Sent. | | **Stage** | A column on one track: where someone is on it. Everyone is at one stage on each track at once. | Belong: Attend, Connect, Serve and Train. | | **Step** | One thing to do, inside one stage of one track. | Join a group; walk with someone; serve somewhere. | | **Role** | A place you need people, and what it asks of them. | Small group leader, 6 of 10. | ## One person, all five words Take Maria, who started coming in the spring. These are the starter pathway's steps; yours will have your own. - She has a **stage** on each track. On Belong, the main track, she is at Connect: that is set at the top of her page. On Become she is at Connect too, and on Lead she hasn't started. Each is set on her page, beside that track's steps, and moves forward only when someone on your team moves it. - She has a next **step** in each **track** at once. In Belong it is "Join a small group". In Become it is "Walk with someone for a season". In Lead it is "Walk with someone yourself", in Lead's only stage, Train. - On [Tracks](/docs/pipelines), Maria is one of the faces at the end of the "Join a small group" bar in the Belong funnel, and of the "Walk with someone for a season" bar in Become. She is counted in every funnel, because each one measures a different direction. - When she joins a group, she passes that step, and her Belong next step becomes "Serve somewhere for a season". Her stage doesn't change by itself. - When you move her to Serve on Belong, that is a **threshold**: it goes on her timeline as "Moved to Serve", and any Belong step she had left in Attend or Connect counts as passed, so she isn't asked for it again. Her place on Become doesn't move with it. - A year on, your **role** "Small group leader" asks for "At Serve or beyond" and "Has served 6 months". With one of those met she shows under **Growing** for that role; with both, under **Ready**. All of that together, Maria and everyone else, every track and every role, is your **pipeline**. ## The words around them | Word | What it means | | --- | --- | | **Next step** | The first step in a track that someone has not taken yet. A person has at most one per track. It is what they see in [My Path](/docs/my-path), in your words. | | **Practice** | Something kept, not finished, such as daily prayer. Practices sit in stages beside steps, and make up a person's **Rule** in My Path. They never count toward a funnel. | | **Threshold** | A move forward to a new stage on a track, recorded on the person's timeline ("Moved to Growing on Become"). A move back writes nothing. See [Stages and thresholds](/docs/walking-with#stages-and-thresholds). | | **Main track** | The first track. Its stage is the one the People list, the Map and My Path's trail show. It always stays first. | | **Quiet** | Someone who has not moved in a track for 90 days. Quiet people are ringed in the faces on Tracks and listed first. | | **Moving, Slowing, Stuck** | How one step on Tracks is doing. **Moving**: everyone who has it next has moved lately. **Slowing**: at least one of them is quiet. **Stuck**: two or more have it next and half or more of them are quiet. The line above each funnel names the first step that is Stuck or Slowing. | | **Ready, Growing** | For a role. **Ready**: everything the role asks is met. **Growing**: one or two things still to go, and at least one already there. See [Roles](/docs/roles#ready-and-growing). | | **Holder** | Someone who already does the role, from Planning Center or added by hand. | ## Track or pipeline? A **track** is one lane: Belong, or Become, or Lead, or one you added. Each one has its own funnel on [Tracks](/docs/pipelines), with the step where people are stuck named in plain words. The **pipeline** is never one track. It is all of them, plus the roles at the end. When someone asks "how is the leadership pipeline?", they mean the Lead track and the roles it fills: start from [Roles](/docs/roles). ## Track or stage? A stage belongs to one track. Belong's stages (say Attend, Connect, Serve) are its own; Become can have different ones (say Exploring, Growing, Making disciples). That is why a person has a stage on each track, and a next step on each. If your church has a familiar path like Attend, Connect, Serve, those are the stages of your Belong (assimilation) track, not a separate thing. ## Step or stage? A step is something a person does. A stage is where they are on a track. Taking every step in a stage doesn't move them to the next stage: their page says **Ready to move**, and someone on your team moves them, so a stage always means what you say it means and never what a checklist says. A step can name the one thing that completes it; see [When a step counts as done](/docs/walking-with#when-a-step-counts-as-done). It works the other way too: moving someone forward on a track counts that track's steps behind their new stage as passed. ## Common mix-ups **"Our Lead track is the leadership pipeline."** Not quite. The Lead track shows who is growing toward leading. The roles show where you need leaders. Together they are the leadership half of your pipeline. **"Someone in Train must be a leader."** A stage isn't a role. Someone can be in Train and hold no role, or hold a role while still in Serve. Roles say who serves where; stages say where someone is. **"Stuck means that person is stuck."** Stuck describes a step, not a person. It means most of the people who have that step next have gone quiet, which usually says more about the step (too big, badly timed, nobody inviting) than about them. **"Finishing a track means they are done."** Finishing a track means they have taken every step you put in it. Add a step and they have one again. **"Every track needs the same stages."** It doesn't. Each track has its own: in the starter pathway, Lead has a single stage, Train. Give each track the stages that fit what it asks. ## Where each word is set - **Tracks, stages, steps and practices** are arranged on **Settings → Pathway setup**, one track at a time. Add a track, rename it or retire it there. See [Editing your pathway](/docs/walking-with#editing-your-pathway). - **Track names** can also be changed by an admin on **Path → Tracks**, for example to Assimilation, Discipleship and Leadership. The new names are used everywhere, including My Path. - **A person's stage** on the main track is set on their page, under **Growth timeline**; on every other track, beside that track's steps under **Next steps**. - **Roles** are added on **Serve → Roles**, each with what it asks of someone. ## Where to go next To set all of this up in your own church's words, read [Fitting the pipeline to your church](/docs/apply-the-pipeline). To fill a role, open [Roles](/docs/roles): who is ready, who is growing, and who knows them. To see where people are stuck, open [Tracks](/docs/pipelines).