One of our clients asked us a few months ago if we could add spanish versions of the system keywords used in Text-to-Church. He knew he could already use spanish keywords for any group, event, or form and just wanted to upgrade that a bit to system keywords.
That made total sense to us, so we added these spanish word equivalents as system keywords. If you're using Text-to-Church, go ahead and try them in your account.
"Connect" is such a common, customized keyword for churches that we added logic to the system to recognize the english word and match the spanish word "Conectar" to it.
As a result of this interaction and upgrade I started thinking about how a church might use Text-to-Church to support a spanish church or ministry. If I were consulting a church on this, here's what I would suggest.
System keywords. Recognize and make known the most important system keywords that people will use all the time. Dar is obviously important. Marca to use Text to check-in would be huge. Yo is fantastic for your spanish speaking folks who will use texting to see everything about themselves in the database.
Custom keywords. Use spanish keywords for the events and groups that are primarily for that ministry or church. You do this on the Registration > Settings page after you create the group or event.
Email & text templates. Any email or text template that you might want to use as a response to a registration form or in a workflow can be written in Spanish. So, take advantage of that flexibilty.
Group / Event / Form names. When you create a group for any type of community group, event, or form use the spanish name. Take advantage of the fact that these forms and many others (group profile, member attributes, etc.) are customizable.
Group attendance. If you have spanish speaking group leaders who would prefer getting their report reminder emails in spanish, let us know. We have a behind-the-scenes option we can enable to send them a spanish interlinear version of the report (attendance) reminder email.
We have not created a full version of the Churchteams platform for Spanish or any other language, but these suggestions will help bilingual churches and ministries take advantage of many of the most popular church management features.
Finally, we're all familiar with texting abbreviations in English. Just in case you need them, here are a few of the common abbreviations for texting in Spanish.
- dtb = Dios te bendiga. (God bless you.)
- gpi = Gracias por invitar. (Thanks for the invite.)
- ntp = No te preocupes. (Don't worry.)
- pti = Para tu informacion. (For your information.)
- tqm = Te quiero mucho. (I love you.)
