What should I know before activating Google Workspace?

One of the most important things a church can do with Google Workspace is to set it up strategically. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you be consistent and make setup go more quickly and easily. 


Who holds the DNS Records for my domain?

  • It is important to know who holds the DNS record for your domain if you want to add in email service or to verify the domain ownership with Google
  • Sometimes this is also the host of your website, but sometimes not. You can look up your URL at http://who.is 
  • DNS is the domain name system or universal records for all websites, emails, and URLs

Do I want Domain Email?

  • Yes, definitely! It comes FREE for all Google for Nonprofit churches - Awesome! 
  • If you have the Google Grant, you also have this! 

Do I want that email to be a separate login and inbox or a forwarding address?

  • Box = User (this is the preferred option)
    • Allows use of all of the other Google Apps mentioned
    • Can be transferred and renamed in the case of a turnover of role for reference information
    • Allows people to have a dedicated email for the church
  • Forwarding = Groups (can be a group of just 1) 
    • This is great for a distribution list (like your Leadership Board or Missions Team)
    • This can be helpful for volunteers who don’t need/want an additional email box to check (if they are using Gmail you can follow the bonus tip at the end of this playbook to “send mail as” so they can also reply from the church email - if you don’t do this, all replies will show their personal email address unless you use the box option) but this does NOT give them access to Google Drive, Calendar, and Meet, so use sparingly

What email addresses do I want?

  • Be consistent, either name@, FLast@, or role@ tends to be good
    • Example for Pastor Steve Smith, steve@, ssmith@, or pastor@ 
    • If needed, you can have aliases (like for common misspellings) but you want the emails to all be named in the same way to help with consistency and ease of use
  • Decide what groups or people will have an official church email
  • Consider this: you can create a group or alias that can stay consistent with subscriptions and accounts. Even if you publicize name@ emails, you can have role@ so that your Kids curriculum stays with kids@ or your website is always under communications@ so that if there’s turnover you don’t need to worry about changing all the account emails. More importantly, 5 years after a person leaves, their email won’t still be the admin on key church accounts!

Backup emails and phone numbers for each user

  • Google will send an activation email to each user to their current personal email inviting them to make a password and login to their new church email for the first time. This is the most secure option for new accounts and highly recommended. The phone number will be used for recovery and verification purposes. 

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