If you follow this blog, you know that last week we released an important change to our look and feel.  The post focused on the ability to quickly look at a series of pinned attributes to have a sense of where someone is on your discipleship profile spectrum.

As you can see it gives a picture of their involvement with just a glance.  And it's fully customizable to accommodate the attributes you define as discipleship measures.  (Check out the Discipleship Signs series for more on that.)

If you haven't stayed up with recent blogs, check out the Tracking Discipleship Signs series.  In these posts I had a great time relating scripture application to data.  Then using this data to provide analytics that give you feedback on your discipleship effectiveness as a church.

Imagine QR codes attractively posted for quick access as people gather for church: outdoor signs, indoor signs, signs on the back of chairs.  Picture people conveniently pointing their phone cameras and clicking a link to check-in.  Attendance is taken. Name tags are printed for kids.  The family security number is texted back.  And people receive a digital version of today's bulletin.

"To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said,“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:31-32

Here is another place that Jesus makes it clear what His disciples look like. 

"Then he said to them all: 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."  Luke 9:23

Here is another place that Jesus makes clear what he expects of his disciples and thus what you and I should expect of them. Our first sign in this series was commitment or surrender.  This is self-denial. The next expectations from this verse are cross-carrying and following.

"A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  John 13:34, 35

This is one of those times Jesus makes crystal clear what his followers look like.  This quality is so outstanding that people don't miss it.  Love.

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”  Luke 16:13

Last time we talked about Commitment as the foundational quality of a Christ-follower.  For most of us commitment is a familiar theme of our faith.  Maybe too familiar.

In last week's blog I made the case that the best way to measure discipleship is by tracking the signs (or indicators) of Jesus followership in a person's life.  One of the first and most fundamental signs is commitment. 

Commitment to Christ and commitment to his church.  Let's consider these and then how to use data to track them.  

Like you, I love the church and am enamored with Jesus' commission to make disciples of all nations.  Years ago as a university student, I was heavily involved in a college disciple-making ministry.   During that time I consumed Leroy Eims' book, The Lost Art of Disciplemaking.  It gave me a framework with clear objectives for becoming and making disciples - devoted followers of Christ. 

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here is a list of some of the objectives right out of the appendix of this

 book. (There are 30 listed there.) 

Six years ago we released an initial version of our volunteer scheduling feature.  It has been updated many times since then, but nothing like we are rolling out tonight.  Tonight's release of SERVICE VOLUNTEERS fills in the gaps to elevate this feature to the very top tier in the industry.

Our Volunteers feature lets you create a group and then schedule that team to serve.  With SERVICE VOLUNTEERS you create Templates made up of all the groups serving during a given service. 

Using the template you can schedule volunteers across all teams, see blocked out dates, potential conflicts, email or text everyone, and choose from 3 options for volunteers to get their own substitutes.