Hi there 👋
Quick context if you're new here: TimelyChurch is the all-in-one platform churches use to run the everyday stuff — people, events, check-in, giving, volunteers, and more. One of the ways it keeps everyone in the loop is Telegram, the free messaging app a lot of your members already have open all day. Connect your church's Telegram bot once, and TimelyChurch can do the talking for you.
A few weeks ago a church told us the part that should've been simplest — members connecting to the bot — wasn't working. That sent us back through the whole experience. Here's what it does now, start to finish.
✨ What's new
Post straight to your church's Telegram group or channel
This is the heart of it: TimelyChurch broadcasts right into the Telegram group or channel your congregation already uses — so the whole church sees it, and nobody has to log into anything. You pick what gets posted: announcements (right away or scheduled), a weekly events digest and reminders, new sermons, Sunday service reminders, birthdays and anniversaries, prayer requests, new form submissions, and a daily verse of the day. Every category is opt-in, and everything goes out on your church's schedule, in your church's time zone.
Now: announcements can also go out privately
Not everyone sits in the church group chat — and some posts are for members only. So alongside the group broadcast, any member who connects their personal Telegram now gets announcements as a private message too. Target a post to one group and only that group's connected members are messaged; members-only announcements stay members-only. Group chat for the whole church, private DMs for the individuals who want them — you're covered both ways.
Volunteers can say yes or no — right inside Telegram
When you schedule someone to serve, they get a private message from the church bot with Yes, I can, Not this time, and Remind me in 24h buttons. One tap and their answer flows straight back into TimelyChurch — no login, no app-switching. For the people who keep your Sundays running, that's the difference between a reminder they ignore and one they act on.
Connecting is now a real, guided step
"Connect Telegram" used to just bounce you to the app and hope for the best. The catch: a bot can't message anyone until they press Start — and people didn't know to. So we built a proper walk-through: open the chat, press Start, done. There's a copy-and-paste backup if the button misbehaves, and the connection link now stays valid for a full week.
A friendly nudge so nobody misses out
If your church has the bot set up and a member hasn't connected yet, their dashboard now shows a gentle, dismissible reminder of what they'll get and how to turn it on. Dismiss it once and it stays gone.
Admins can see who's connected
In Settings → Integrations → Telegram, there's now a "Linked members" list — who's connected and when. Handy for knowing how much of your church you can reach this way, and who might need a hand getting set up.
🛠️ Fixes & smaller improvements
- Group-targeted announcements could quietly fail to notify anyone. A bug meant that whenever an announcement was aimed at specific groups, the notification step could error out silently — so the right people weren't told. Fixed; group-targeted announcements now reach exactly the members they should.
- Blocked-bot handling. If a member blocks the bot, we quietly stop trying and unlink them, so your sends stay clean.
💬 Keep the ideas coming
Everything we build starts with a church telling us what would help. If something's bugging you, slowing you down, or you wish it worked differently — or there's a language or feature your church needs — we want to hear it. We read every note.
We're here to help,
The TimelyChurch Team