A few weeks ago, in a blog post entitled Groups consistency, I talked about using attendance as a sign that points to faithfulness.  And faithfulness is a pre-requisite character quality for choosing leaders who multiply the ministry.  (2 Timothy 2:2)

In the same way, attendance is a sign for pastors and church staff that something may be going on in a person's life they are called to shepherd.

In discipleship discussions, we often quote 2 Timothy 2:2 as a pillar text for understanding discipleship that multiplies disciples.  The idea, of course, is that Paul invested in training Timothy and was encouraging him to invest in other people who would invest in others.  

Notice the adjective that Paul uses to describe the people in whom Timothy was to invest his time.  Depending on your translation, the word is generally reliable (NIV, NLT), or faithful (ESV, NASB, KJV).  It is someone in whom you trust.

Matthew 6:21 says, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  So, one sign of how much an individual or family treasures your church is their giving.  

Another huge benefit of the Roundtables that we've been doing the past couple of months has been the amazing ideas for upgrades and tweaks we've gotten as we interact with our most engaged users.

Many of the upgrades in this post came from that environment.  Some came directly through support.  All of them are a picture of our commitment to build the best software for churches in the context of community.

Back in January I announced that we were going to start a weekly Roundtable for clients to discuss topics of interest.  The idea was to create a collaborative learning environment for clients and our staff.  We admitted up front that it would be an experiment and that we would be learning as we go.  I thought you might want an update.

The Roundtable this Thursday starts our discussion on workflows.  We'll have different users share some of their favorites and brainstorm possibilities for using this powerful feature.  But, with Easter coming soon, I thought it would be good to consider how workflows might help with Easter communication.  

Yes!  Another great reason to consider Churchteams online giving.  Yesterday we released a new option to allow your givers the choice to cover the transaction fees for their online contribution. To be honest when I first heard of the idea of "No fees online giving," I was skeptical.

First of all, there is no such thing as "no fees" online transactions.  Banks and credit card issuing companies all charge for their services.  So, while "no fees" is technically true from the church administrative perspective, it feels misleading in that the fees are just passed on to the giver.  It seemed to me that "no fees" was marketing hype to get people's attention.

It's great to see how the vaccinations and our new habits seem to have turned the tide on Covid-19.  But, as you're planning for Easter, 2021; do you wish there was a way to do a better job of managing the numbers of people attending services.  Maybe our Covid lessons from last year can help.  Here's a slight reworking of the blog post from May, 2020 on how to use Churchteams to set up a worship reservation system.

Because it was the week before Christmas and because of the craziness of Covid, you might have missed the biggest release of 2020.  I introduced it as our Digital Assistant - Scheduled Reports.  That was just over two months ago.  There wasn't a lot of fanfare, we just offered it quietly as a gift.