The pipeline, drawn as a grid

# 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 along it; a stage is a column; a step is one thing to do; a role is a place you need people. For: Everyone on the team Canonical: https://giftwell.app/docs/pipeline-words GiftWell 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, read left to right across every stage. | Belong, Become and Lead. | | **Stage** | A column: a season of belonging that everyone on your list is in. | Attend, Connect, Serve and Train. | | **Step** | One thing to do. Each step sits in one stage and grows 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. - Her **stage** is Connect. That is one fact about her, set on her page under **Growth timeline**, and it 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", which sits in Train, two stages ahead: a next step can be in a later stage than the person. - 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 does not change by itself. - When you move her to Serve, that is a **threshold**: it goes on her timeline as "Moved to Serve", and any step she had left in Attend or Connect counts as passed, so she is not asked for it again. - 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 GiftWell](/docs/my-giftwell), 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 GiftWell. They never count toward a funnel. | | **Threshold** | A move forward to a new stage, recorded on the person's timeline. A move back writes nothing. See [Stages and thresholds](/docs/walking-with#stages-and-thresholds). | | **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 row: Belong, or Become, or Lead. 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? They cross. A stage is a column, a track is a row. Someone can be in the Serve stage and still have Become steps ahead of them. That is why a person has one stage but a next step in each track. ## Step or stage? A step is something a person does. A stage is where they are. Taking every step in a stage does not move them to the next stage; someone on your team does that, so a stage always means what you say it means and never what a checklist says. It works the other way too: moving someone forward counts the 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 is not 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. **"Tracks and stages need to line up."** They do not, and in most churches they will not. A track can skip stages entirely: in the starter pathway, Lead has one step, and it sits in Train. ## Where each word is set - **Stages, steps and practices** are arranged on **Settings → Pathway**. Each step there says which track it grows. See [Editing your pathway](/docs/walking-with#editing-your-pathway). - **Track names** are changed by an admin on **Pipeline → Tracks**, for example to Assimilation, Discipleship and Leadership. The new names are used everywhere, including My GiftWell. - **A person's stage** is set on their page, under **Growth timeline**. - **Roles** are added on **Pipeline → 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).