Membership status: Subscriber vs Member (and Pending)

Membership describes a person's relationship with your church. It is one simple label on each person, and it is separate from what someone can do in the dashboard and from whether they receive your email or text.

The three states

Subscriber. The starting point for everyone. Anyone who signs up to hear from you, registers for an event, checks in, or gets imported begins here. They are following along but are not a formal member yet.
Member. Someone you have recognized as a formal part of the church.
Pending. A public join request that is waiting for your approval. This state is set automatically when a visitor submits a join request from your public page. You cannot put someone into Pending yourself, and it never appears as a choice you can pick.

What membership is not

It is not a role. Membership does not give anyone access to your dashboard or change what they can manage. That is handled separately by team roles and permissions.
It is not a subscription. Changing someone's membership never turns their email or text on or off. Who receives your messages is controlled by the separate Email and Text switches on the person's profile.

Set someone's membership

The most direct way is from their profile.

Go to the People page and open the person you want to change.
Open the Settings tab on their profile.
Choose from the Membership dropdown. Pick Subscriber or Member. The change saves right away, and you will see a confirmation.

Other places you can change it

You can set membership (again, Subscriber or Member only) from several spots:

The People list. Click the Membership badge on any row to switch it inline.
In bulk. Filter your list, open the ... menu, and choose Change membership to update everyone in the filtered list at once.
When importing. In the spreadsheet file (CSV) import, use Membership for this batch to set the state for every new contact. You can change individuals later.
When adding a person. The Add a person window has a Membership field so you can set it as you go.

Approving a join request

When someone submits a join request from your public page, they show up as Pending. A card appears on your Home page that reads "[Name] wants to join."

Go to Home and find the join request in the attention list.
Click Approve. This promotes the person from Pending to Member and sends them a welcome email.

You can also decline the request, which quietly moves them back to Subscriber with no email sent.

Good to know

Promoting someone to Member directly (from their profile, the badge, in bulk, or on import) sends no email. Only approving a Pending join request sends a welcome email.
Every membership change is reversible, so you can move someone back to Subscriber anytime.
The only way a person becomes Pending is a public join request. Whether join requests need approval is set in Settings > General.