Happy week after Easter.  You likely spent a lot of time preparing for last Sunday and now it's over.  Hopefully, you had a lot of guests and collected their information. 

I know you're exhausted, but you really need to follow up with these people. You'll be tempted to do something simple like a single "thank you" letter or email to invite them back.  But, you worked so hard!  Why not take follow up to a new level by setting up a drip campaign to continue to serve them?  The difference is bigger than you think and it's easier to do than you think.

The development team has been busy responding to requests and upgrading the system.  This first one has been requested a lot and will speed up check-in for events where pre-registration was required and you want to have everything ready as soon as people arrive.  No electronic check-in required.

1. Pre-print check-in name tags and security labels.
2. Disable Text-to-Chat.
3. Two word keywords for Text-to-Church.
4. New email editor options.
5. Report filters by next month dates for workflows.
6. Include "Fees Covered" on financial reports.

Text-to-Chat is the new environment for exploring creative church communication possibilities.  Last time we we looked at the top three ways roundtable participants thought they would use it.

This week, we'll look at four other ideas we came up with.  These are not as tried and true, but they are a bit more creative and have pretty significant potential.

Last week about 30 of us did a customer and staff Zoom Roundtable on the topic of ways to use Text-to-Chat.  Here is the problem in the words of one participant.

For many churches the most disruptive way that life happened over the past two years has been the stress level of staff.  

Our senior pastor resigned after 25 years, we are now searching for a new senior pastor.  Our children's minister also resigned.  Both in 2021.

Some churches thrived the last couple of years in the areas of evangelism and missions by serving their community as testing / vaccination sites or food distribution centers.  These raised their level of visibility.

But, the more common experience has been like this one from our January survey.

It seems like life's challenges never slow down, much less stop.  We turn on the news every day to learn of the latest shooting, natural disaster, economic challenge, social unrest, health guideline, political argument, and now a war. 

This sense of constant change weighs heavily on the shoulders of church leaders.  How should we respond in light of all this, and what technology tools can help? 

This comment from our survey a couple of months ago is insightful.  

How is your church different now than in 2019?

This was the question I asked in my blog on January 11.  It linked to a survey that many of you responded to. 

As I reviewed and organized what I learned from this survey, I came up with "Seven ways life happened to church in the past three years." 

So far, I've written blogs on three of these.  This is the fourth.  The insight is that as a result of the pandemic, we now have a more Cautious Congregation.

Church staff are seeing this in the form of less responsiveness to connection cards; more quickly to say no when asked to volunteer; less engaging in community; and, for many people, a slow return to church life.

These insights come from personal conversations as well as survey responses like these:

One of the most interesting things I've heard from a lot of church leaders is that their Sunday numbers are almost back compared to pre-Covid, but the crowd is different.  There are lots of new faces.  And a lot of the old faces are missing.

Last week we focused on our new Text upgrades rollout, which, by the way, is a game-changer if you missed it.  This week, I'm back to my Life Happened series talking about how technology can help the church navigate the change we've seen the last three years.  The 7 topics for this series came out of the voice of the customer research we recently did to try to pinpoint what actually changed.

Just this week I received texts from my dentist, doctor, city utilities, a political survey, Verizon, Chase Bank, Honda, and Eddie Bauer.  I can even text my dentist back if I have a question or need to change my appointment and they respond personally!  I bet you've had the same experience.