Family Lessons in the Member Portal

The Family Lessons page is a parent-facing view in the TimelyChurch member portal that surfaces what each child is learning in Sunday School. It pulls together memory verses, home activities, and discussion questions for every class a parent's children are enrolled in -- in one place.

You'll find it in the member portal under Family > Lessons.

Who Sees This Page

The page is available to any logged-in member of the church who has at least one child (or other family member) enrolled in a class. Specifically:

• The portal identifies the visitor as the person tied to their account.
• It looks up every family the person belongs to, then collects all family members from those families.
• It then finds all active class enrollments for any of those family members.

If a parent has no enrolled children -- or if their children's classes have no recent scheduled lessons -- the page shows an empty state.

What Content Appears

For each child the parent has access to, the page shows:

Per-Class Section

• The class name (e.g., "3rd-5th Grade Sunday School").
• A list of recent and upcoming scheduled lessons for that class. Specifically, the page shows lessons from 6 weeks in the past through 2 weeks in the future, so families can review what was just taught and preview what is coming next.
• For each scheduled lesson:
  • The class date.
  • The lesson title.
  • The Member Summary ("what we learned today" written for parents).
  • The Memory Verse and Memory Verse Reference (e.g., John 3:16).
  • The Home Activity -- a suggestion for reinforcing the lesson at home.
  • The Discussion Questions -- conversation starters parents can use during dinner or bedtime.

Filter Rules

Only schedules that meet all of these conditions appear:

• The schedule has a lesson selected (schedules where the teacher has not yet picked a lesson are excluded).
• The schedule is not marked as a holiday.
• The group itself is active and is a class.

How It Ties to Per-Child Class Enrollment

The Family Lessons page is driven entirely by active class enrollments. The chain is:

1. The logged-in person belongs to one or more families.
2. Family members are gathered together -- this is everyone in the parent's family unit.
3. The page finds the active class enrollments for everyone in that family roster.
4. For each matching class, scheduled lessons in the date window are displayed.

This means:

• If a child is moved to a new class, the new class's lessons appear on the next page load.
• If a child is removed from a class (their enrollment goes inactive), that class's lessons disappear from the parent's view.
• A parent who is not a member of the family will not see those children's lessons.

What Parents Can Do From This Page

The Family Lessons page is read-only. Parents cannot edit lesson content, mark attendance, or contact teachers from this view. It is purely a window into what each child is learning so families can:

• Talk about Sunday's lesson at home during the week.
• Help kids memorize the memory verse.
• Do the home activity together.
• Walk through the discussion questions over a meal.

For interactive features (RSVPing to events, viewing schedules, messaging), parents use other parts of the member portal.

Admin Controls

Admins control what appears on the Family Lessons page through two mechanisms:

Per-Lesson Content

Whether each of these fields appears depends on what was filled in when the lesson was created:

• Member Summary
• Memory Verse / Memory Verse Reference
• Home Activity
• Discussion Questions

If a field is blank on a lesson, it simply doesn't render for that lesson. There is no "hide" toggle per field per lesson -- the visibility is controlled by content presence.

Church-Wide Toggle

In Lesson Settings > General Settings, the Show parent content in portal option controls whether parent-facing content is visible in the member portal at all. If this is off, the Family Lessons page renders an empty/disabled state regardless of what is filled in on individual lessons.

Tips for a Useful Family Lessons Experience

• Fill in the parent-facing fields consistently. A family lessons page with empty memory verses and missing home activities feels broken to parents.
• Use plain language in the Member Summary. Parents are not always Bible scholars -- write the summary the way you would tell a friend.
• Keep home activities low-effort. A 5-minute conversation prompt is more likely to happen than a 20-minute craft.
• Review the page yourself each week. Log in as a test parent to see what families see.

Related

• Creating Lessons -- how to fill in the parent-facing content fields.
• Class Rosters and Attendance -- how children get enrolled in classes.
• Teacher Portal -- the teacher-facing counterpart to this page.