How to improve what you know about discipleship progress in your church

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 3/12/24 2:00 PM

Let's welcome our new friends from Exponential last week.  Some of you joined James and me Wednesday for our lunch discussion on the topic of "How to measure the immeasurable parts of discipleship." 

I love this topic and it was amazing do it with James.  We not only shared, but also asked questions and listened to the experience of others.  I have reflected on all of it quite a bit since then, and thought it might be worth it to capture and share some of those thoughts.  So, here are five ideas on how to improve what you know about discipleship progress in your church.

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Tags: Groups

How church network and mission non-profits use us to manage their ministry (2)

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 3/5/24 1:45 PM

There's a chapter in the book, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement entitled, "The Two Structures of God's Redemptive Mission."  In it Ralph Winter makes the Biblical and historical case for the importance of fraternal church associations.  He refers to the church as the modality structure and these associations as the sodality structures God uses to accomplish His redemptive purposes. 

There's no doubt that what we call network and missional non-profits have been part of God's plan since the book of Acts.  This doesn't take away from the church.  It actually adds to it.  It extends and empowers it.  That's why I love that our software is being used by so many of these organizations.

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Tags: Best Practices

How church network and mission non-profits use us to manage their ministry (1)

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 2/27/24 1:45 PM
  Last week I mentioned that our team was working with a church network non-profit who wanted an easy way to gather weekly attendance, salvation decisions, and baptisms from the churches in their network.   I did a little research and discovered that 7% of our clients are non-profits that work with but are not a local church.  We have never marketed to that ministry sector.  Almost all of these found and chose us  through a referral of a pastor or ministry admin who uses Churchteams. 
 
In our experience these organizations fit into two different categories based on their purpose or calling.  One is primarily to network churches for sharing resources, training, accountability, and so on.  In business terms this would be called a business to business (B2B) organization.  Metrolina Baptist Association  is a B2B organization that uses Churchteams.
 
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Tags: Best Practices

New!  A better way to record worship total attendance and decisions

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 2/20/24 2:31 PM
Last month I wrote about using All Check to capture individual worship attendance at the same time families are checking into Sunday School classes, and/or Volunteer service.  The idea is everyone checking into everything.  
 
But, we realize that for many different reasons, individual worship attendance is not really a thing for most churches.   So, here's another thought for making it easier for your worship attendance counters.  It is based on an upgrade we rolled out a couple of weeks ago. 
 
A minstry that oversees a network of churches was working with our team to come up with a way to get worship attendance from each of their churches each week.  They came up with the idea of making each church a group in Churchteams and then use the automated email meeting report reminder system to notify the person or people responsible for attendance tracking at each church.
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Tags: New Release

New!  Did you know you can pre-print labels and do daily attendance?

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 2/13/24 1:30 PM

Churchteams has so many solutions for common church problems that it's hard for us to keep them in front of people.  We've recently done some upgrades to nine of these, so I'll use the opportunity to give you some extra insight into two of them.  Below that is a list and then an explanation of each upgrade.

Problem:  Registration and check-in don't work together.  We solved this by building best-in-class level features for both.  They are not modular in design, so there is no exchange of information between the systems.  They are completely integrated.  However, check-in for events is different than weekly check-in.  Churches requested the ability to pre-print name tags to help with relationship building and minimize check-in.  We released that feature in 2022.  Upgrade #1 takes that functionality to an even more convenient level!  

Problem:  We want to use check-in for our school or pre-school.  From the very beginning our check-in system had the ability to do daily check-ins including capturing attendance.  The tricky part a couple of years after the launch was creating new options to report attendance daily rather than weekly.  We added that a few years ago.  Upgrade #7 below adds the weekday name to the report. Pretty nice!

 

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Tags: New Release

Three reasons groups are the best way to organize and manage your church

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 2/6/24 1:00 PM

A long time ago, there was a buzz in church leadership, administration, and discipleship circles about becoming a CHURCH OF GROUPS not just a church with groups.  As a church administrator and discipleship pastor I read, went to conferences, and asked questions to figure out what this conversation meant practically for our church and my responsibility to help manage it.

My take-away was that everything we did in church life should be organized as if it were a small group.  So, groups included not only what we generally thought of as small groups; but also children's classes,  volunteer teams, all events, discipleship classes, assimilation steps, registration forms, and anything else that involved more than one person. 

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Tags: Church Management Software, Groups

Which option for calendar software is best for our church?

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 1/30/24 2:00 PM

This might sound like a crazy question, but it is a real one for pretty much every church, "which option for calendar software is best for our church?" 

The reason it can be confusing is that there are so many voices and solutions out there. 

Most websites offer calendar features options.  Many Church Management Systems have a calendar option or even are built around a calendar.  Event management softwares offer calendars.  Facility management softwares offer calendars.  And, of course your office management software like Outlook and Google integrate their calendars into everything.

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Tags: Communication

How to solve the problem and see the potential of worship service attendance

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 1/23/24 1:45 PM

We had a church sign up for Churchteams the other day because they saw what we call "All Check" in action at another church. The big idea with All Check is that you can use it to check everyone in to everything they are involved in on a Sunday morning.

Not only is it used to check in kids and print out security tags, but all your students and adults use it as well to check-in to their small groups, serving teams, and worship.  Literally, everyone check-in to everything.

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Tags: Check-in

Notes:  How to make sure you don't drop the ball with people

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 1/16/24 2:30 PM

A support email came in the other day asking if we had a way to create private notes for a pastor or staff members.  I suspect he was thinking about pastoral care or counseling notes that need to be secured. 

But, there are many other conversations you have with people that are important not to drop the ball on.  Consider these:

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Tags: Communication

Epic!  The story of XPMinistry and how we serve other organizations

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 1/9/24 2:45 PM

Reid Hopkins has been a Churchteams raving fan for a long time.  Last year I mentioned highlighting ways people are using Churchteams through an occasional Epic! blog post. 

The part of Reid's story I want to highlight today is his launch of XP Ministry last year.  It does a great job illustrating how we are helping other, non-church organizations thrive.  Here's my interview with him.  

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Tags: Church Management Software

New!  Five feature improvements and two social commitments.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 1/3/24 3:00 PM
Happy New Year!  It seemed right to me this first week of 2024 to get out this list of five new feature improvements our team has done the last couple of months. 
 
None of these are super-amazing unless of course they save you a ton of time and effort.  Which is exactly what these are designed to do in their specific application.
 
You likely have new things you are looking forward to in the new year.  I am committing to better engage personally on Facebook and LinkedIn this year.  In fact I just posted some things I'm looking forward to doing and/or at least trying in 2024 there, along with a few of my likely optimistic prognostications.  
 
Back to new features from the end of 2023.  As usual, here is the list followed by the descriptions.   
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Tags: New Release

Five company bright spots and one reason we do what we do.

Posted by Boyd Pelley on 12/19/23 2:00 PM

For me, Christmas sheds a great light on the previous year.  Does it you?  I have been a journaler for decades.  During the month of December I review my entries for the year and narrow them down to a few highlights that the Lord has said to me and is working out in my life.  These become my objectives to review and work on the next year.

I just did a similar thing by reviewing the New Release blog posts and reflecting on our business process improvements.  I looked over them and narrowed them down to these five bright spots for 2023.

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Tags: New Release

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