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.
Why is this helpful?
Because numbers tell a story.
If you track the overall number of people at a worship service, that will help you plan for future services, parking, and facilities. It also tells you about how you are doing overall compared to a previous week, month, or year. It is a great metric for growing a church.
But, if you track individual attendance, you have the data to track individual faithfulness and consistency. These tell you the trust, confidence, and commitment level of people. A church of 200 that has 10% who attend 75% or more of the time is a much different church than one that has 50% who attend that consistently. It is a great metric for making disciples.
Also, tracking individual attendance gives you the data to spot changes in people's behavior. All of us have heard the story of a distraught church member who stopped going to church and no one seemed to care or even notice. Being part of a community that notices is an important part of church involvement. Individual attendance allows you to automate notifications that an individual or family has been gone for 3, 4, or more weeks. It is a great metric for pastoral care.
How is this possible?
Go where people already are.
All Check was the natural evolution of our unique Text-to-Church development. The reason it works so well is that people are used to using the text messaging app on their phone. They use it with family. They use it with others at church. They use it with businesses and professional services.
With Text-to-Church people can use texting to give, fill out a connection card, register for an event, go to any web location, and chat to share prayer requests or other open-ended topics. So, texting the word "check" on Sunday morning to the church office number becomes easy and routine.
For those who prefer it, they can do all these things and more by downloading our member app. For them, Churchteams is a native icon on their phone. If check-in has started, the check-in options shows up at the top of the app so that all they have to do is click a link.
What motivates people to do it?
It has to benefit them.
Parents want to know that their children are safe when they drop them off in the children's program. They will always be the most motivated to use All Check because they have to check-in to get a security tag. They love All Check because it allows them to bypass the line by using their phone. They can walk into the children's area and a greeter already has their tags and is expecting them.
One way to get your adult volunteers to check-in is to use the same label printers to print name tags that identify them as volunteers. Like for parents, All Check allows them to use their phones and avoid the kiosk line. Parents that also volunteer get to do both at the same time.
If you create your services as groups and identify them as worship groups, then everyone sees the option to check themselves into worship when they check in to everything else. Once they do it, the system will pre-check them to the same service each time they check-in.
Finally, we added an option (Check-in view item E6) to redirect people to a web page or a Churchteams content page that is the worship handout for the day. Going digital with your worship handout motivates everyone to check-in first either by Text or by the App. So, it not only saves time and paper, but it also helps you get weekly worship attendance. You could also link it to a connection card to collect more information before or after they see the handout.
By the way, just one family member has to text or use the app to check everyone in to everything at once. Super convenient and easy.
The person who reached out to our support team the other day had experienced this process and wanted to learn how to implement it at their church. We are excited to show them the ropes. Not because the technology is cool, but because the technology will help them capture the information that will help them grow their church, care for people, and make disciples. Now, that's cool.
